Limitations

Right after he blew up his corrupt boss in “Magnum Force” Dirty Harry says “Man has got to know his limitations.”  There are more reasonable ways to deal with a problem boss, but you have to applaud the creativity.  Nature is one of our worst enemies in setting boundaries especially physical ones.   When I was in college I competed in power-lifting and once dead-lifted 400 lbs.  It’s been a long time since that happened and now I can’t even pull a drunk out of bed.  Besides, it’s so much easier to just let them sleep it off then wrestle around with them and get all stinky.   Similarly, understanding your health limitations is tricky since it’s easier to defy science and pretend 500 years of medical research doesn’t apply to you.  Thankfully we have family and friends helping us manage our limitations.

After my open heart surgery the home health care nurse asked me on the first visit if I golfed.  I said, “not well, why?” She once had a heart surgery patient who lived on a golf course who started putting on the green near his house.  Feeling better he started chipping.  Feeling even friskier, he swung the driver one day so hard his chest popped open like in the scene from “Alien.” Limitations.  When I lived in Oklahoma beer sold in grocery stores was 3.2% alcohol while imports were sold in liquor stores.  One Saturday I was standing in line at Midwest Wine & Spirits holding a case of Corona behind an old guy buying a half pint of Jim Beam.  The clerk asked him, “do you want a bag for that?” He said, “naw, that’ll just get in the way.“  Limitations.   I knew a person years ago had lymphoma just like me.  I had chemo and radiation per the doctor’s orders.  He thought that treatment was too toxic so instead he embarked on a diet of entirely green vegetables to cure his cancer.  He died within a year and 36 years later I’m still catching the sunset each day.  Herbal medicine is great, but hedge your bet a bit with some modern medicine.  Limitations.

You’ve probably noticed that none of these scenarios involved women behaving badly.  Women don’t seem to push the envelope on healthcare issues; I rarely hear them chatting with their friends about how they toughed out a heart attack or limped around on a broken ankle for weeks.     Even though they challenge medical advice privately, women just don’t find it interesting to brag to their friends about fighting doctor’s orders.  Maybe that’s why they live longer than men.  Like teachers that don’t follow instructions, however, they know more about your limits than their own.  Regardless of whether you once flew jet fighters or ran with the bulls in Pamplona, you’re eventually going to be chastised for doing too much.  That’s why God invented recliners and partners to limit our behavior.  Growing up my father use to set limits with the order:  “don’t do as I do, do as I say.”   I always figured that directive only applied to the high school years, but never figured saying “yes, dear” would actually be good for me.  Slainte.