Marriage Diaries: My perfectly healthy husband is worried about Sniper's Alley
My 67-year-old husband is perfectly well – yet he talks about health constantly. It's the main topic of conversation whether we are on our own or with anyone else.
In the morning, over breakfast news, he will zoom in on any story about the latest celebrity who has died. He also goes through the obits in our local paper to see if there's anyone he knows. It's like a morbid fascination.
Looking back, this started when he turned 65. He saw this as a dreaded milestone, especially as his best friend had recently died suddenly from a heart condition.
I reacted by trying to help his wife but my husband was convinced that he had heart problems too because he sometimes got breathless. The GP didn't find anything so he paid to have a comprehensive private check which also gave him the all-clear.
However, every now and then, my husband will hear about another friend or colleague who is ill or has died. He'll then go through the same procedure of going to the doctor and then, if nothing is found, paying for a private screening. This gets very expensive. It might be worth it if it gave him peace of mind, but it doesn't.
Don't get me wrong. I feel very sorry for him but at the same time, I don't know how to help any more. I'm also anxious that his anxieties are going to bring illness on himself and make us both old before our time.
To my dismay, an increasing number of our friends have a similar attitude. In the past, our topics of conversation were about children, films, jobs, books. Now the first question is always 'How are you?' which then leads into a keen discussion on who has had a knee/hip op; how long the waiting lists are, etc.
Perhaps it's because that at our age, we are all beginning to see contemporaries getting ill or falling off the perch. It's like a rite of passage such as children going to school or getting married.
I'm a little concerned myself about what the future might hold but I don't want to be one of the 'worried well'. One of my friends describes this stage of our lives as running through a tunnel where bullets are being fired. Some of us will make it and others won't. As she says, we have to hope for the best, enjoy life in the moment and lead a healthy lifestyle.
I love running and walking. When I suggested to my husband that he got a bit sportier, he looked appalled and asked if I wanted him to break a leg. (This is a reference to a friend of ours who fell while playing tennis and had to be airlifted. He is fine now.)
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