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It's as good as it gets when you reach my age. I enjoyed being useful when I was a young pediatrician, and I greatly enjoyed it when I was a better-paid radiologist. Now that I am retired, I mostly spend my time trying to be a competent pickleball player and golfer. I want to stay useful, however, and now the times that I can actually make a difference in someone's life are vastly more meaningful for me than they were when I was paid to be useful.
I have mentioned before that I now volunteer to help friends and family navigate our broken medical care system. Helping them understand their situation is about all I can do in most circumstances, but that does seem to help. I find that medical problems get more complicated the more that I learn about them.
My friend Richard has been devastated by severe back pain. I reviewed his MRI and told him that I couldn't see a specific reason for his pain, but I thought his images did a poor job of displaying his upper lumbar spine where the problem probably arose. His surgeon agreed and recommended a steroid epidural injection in that area and then surgery if that didn't work. I told him that the steroid injection was reasonable, but he needed a more comprehensive imaging exam, such as a CT myelogram before he had any surgery.
My sister is an 82-year-old elite endurance athlete who had slightly abnormal cholesterol levels on routine bloodwork and then a very high cardiac calcium score on follow-up for that. She is scheduled for additional testing to see if she has asymptomatic coronary artery disease. I told her that it seems to me that there is a stronger predictive value for a cardiac calcium score in younger patients than older patients. I suspect that coronary calcium in young patients is very likely within atherosclerotic plaque, but in an 82-year-old person, it might just be in the outer wall of the artery rather than within plaque that could grow or break off into the bloodstream. I don't know if that is entirely true, but it makes sense to me. I know for a fact that there is no one in the world her age who can run faster or farther than she can, and that is better evidence for a healthy heart than any other type of test.
We shall see.
Discussion (8)
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That is fascinating. Does your sister hold any masters records in her field?
A friend of mine from both Art School and high-school art class, married a doctor from California who happens to be the world-record holder (or was as of a few yeas ago) in the 100-meter dash for men 65 years and older.
I would think that physical abilities should hold some significant measure of a person's state of health, as opposed to just lab results.
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I don't know what this is scoring. I was overweight in my mid -fifties when I went for a long overdue checkup and found I had slightly high blood pressure (140/90) that the doctor said would wear out my heart (congestive heart failure) over time. But he also discovered I had a congenital defective aortic valve that was bimodal when the normal is trimodal. He said that calcification of the valve frequently occurs and that it often occurs a couple of decades earlier in bimodal valves than in trimodal. Anyway, that's the only reference to calcium I'm familiar with.
So I had regular testing and was informed of some warning signs and shortness of breath was the one that triggered my open-heart surgery valve replacement when I was 69 years old. I'm now 86 and doing well. I played basketball and softball until I was 80. I then had a second open-heart surgery to do some repairs around that same valve and here I am with cancer, in remission after surgery and radiation, in my jawbone.
I'm grateful for the medical attention I have had.
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She has been a national champion triathlete in her age division for over 30 years.
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Wow! Tell her I said "Hi."
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You're a true blessing to your friends and family.
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