Rock the Silver

Heads in the sand

I gave a speech at work about my cancer experience. There were a lot of engineers and other quantitative types in the audience. I knew that if I said I was diagnosed at age 43 and was in my 14th year of survival, somebody could calculate my age, probably backwards and in dog years, too.

So I just went ahead and made it part of the speech. They were digesting the numbers when I called out to a friend who works in finance, as well as my colleagues in communications, who were there in droves to support me.

“Hey, Debra. I know you can do the math. Communicators, I know you can’t.”

Everybody laughed, and I said for those of you who need help adding it up, that makes me 57 years old. It was liberating to just say it and move on ... to take away the power of intimidation and own it.

You can dye your hair and inject your face, and that might create the illusion of youth, but I'm pretty sure they know how old we are. My thinking is that silence is a position of weakness, and being silent erodes confidence over time. I refuse to cower. About anything. Although I will say that some things come easier than others.

My speech was on breaking the silence about ovarian cancer. That’s the national theme, but it’s my personal theme as well, because I didn’t speak out for so long. Too scared. Five years, 10 years, at what point do you quit worrying about your own fears and help someone else?

It came full circle today. I had a meeting at work and confess to being a little abrupt at first. I had so much to do, and I really didn’t have the time to go through all this. But a guy on my team and a woman I didn’t know needed my input, so I agreed to a spur-of-the-moment meeting. About half-way through I apologized for being snippy, and I thanked them for engaging me in the discussion.

We were done with our business, and the woman said, “On another matter, I’d like to thank you for your speech two weeks ago. You probably saved my life.”

I’m like, whoa. Seriously? It turns out her mother died of ovarian cancer, and her grandmother died of ovarian cancer. She said, “I’m 52 years old. That's the age my mother died, and I just refused to deal with it. Nobody talks about it, so I ignored my risk. You inspired me to see my doctor. I couldn’t do it before. I was too afraid.”

She went on to say that she wanted to live, and after she saw that someone else had actually lived through it, she knew it was time to get her head out of the sand.

That’s how I feel about life, aging and gray hair. Let's get our heads out of the sand. If enough of us draw the line at pretending we’re anything but the age we are, and if we are lucky enough to live through it, we can help people see that the second half of life is rich with possibility.

And guess what? Youth doesn't even get you in the door.

It only took 29 years ...

Hmmm. I’m talking to a guy at work about career development and he says, “At your age, you need to strike it big now.” He went on to say there aren’t many choices left at this stage of my career. If I were to take a lateral opportunity to broaden my experience, there won’t be anything left when I’m ready to move up again.



He is a colleague and a friend, and I know he wasn’t saying, “Look, you old hag, give it up.” He was just sharing his view of the world and offering what he thought was good advice. I can’t say I haven’t wondered about the same things.



My reaction? Nothing in real time. I am so well-trained in the art of the poker face that I simply sat there and nodded. One of my strengths is that I am calm in a storm. I can see an issue from all sides and reason everything out, validating and searching for nuggets of truth, so it didn’t occur to me that he was wrong. I just don’t like the concept of a professional expiration date, and I certainly don’t like it applied to me.



Later I came to the conclusion he might have been a bit insensitive, and I was annoyed ... but not for long. I believe he had good intent. And in the end, people can think what they want. Eventually we have to tune out the noise, hold strong and believe in ourselves.



It’s not easy to stay the course. I always wanted to be a writer, but I also wanted to make money, and the two are not necessarily compatible. I was a freelancer for awhile, and that is a quick way to go broke. Back in 1983 I got a gig writing a column for a newspaper. I knew I had found my calling, but when we moved for my husband’s career, I lost the gig.

 However, I never lost the passion for writing and longed to be a columnist again.

I kept working and dibbled and dabbled at writing, attacking it from all corners, but I couldn't find my groove. Four years ago this month I started this blog. My first post suggested the blog would be about fashion and style, and occasionally it is, but Rock the Silver has evolved to become my personal column -- the reincarnation of my dream from 29 years ago.

In these four years, I’ve attracted wonderful readers like you, and I am grateful for the opportunity to connect. I appreciate that you care enough to read what I write. I’m not sure how I thought this would turn out, this balance of demanding career and writing, but I’m doing what I set out to do, and it feels good. I believed in myself, and I never gave up.

You know I'm not big on dispensing advice, but here it is anyway. Never compromise your dreams because someone expects less of you.

Stronger in the contrast

"For women of any age, the integrity of the hair should always look beautiful. It should look shiny, healthy and young. When women over 40 wear longer hair, keeping it off the face is important because it casts shadows on the face, which can make you look older," explains Anthony Cole, international Sebastian artist.

I read the above quote in an article, "Too old to wear braids?" on Style Goes Strong. I guess I go there because I'm not pissed off enough already and need something to push me over the edge. The headlines alone can make me go all Linda Blair. But I look anyway. It's just like when I complain to my husband that the new Abby gives really dumb advice, and he says, "Why do you read it?" I don't know. I am accustomed to agitation.

We'll skip over the part about hair having integrity. That hurts my head (I went to a state college). The quote mostly annoys me because women are trying to figure out how to age and look good, but the beauty industry translates that into a constant pounding that everyone has to look young. Good and young are very different concepts. The older I get, the less I even want to try and reach back and have a grab at young. I'm over it. I would rather press onward and redefine what good looks like.

And I'm seriously not scared of a few shadows making me look older. Hair up, hair down, in my face or in a braid. Bring it on. To quote Charles Dickens, "There are dark shadows on the Earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast."

57 and counting

It is my tradition to post a picture of myself on my birthday. I can only summon the strength to do this about once a year. Me and the camera -- so wrong on so many levels. The lighting is awful. My hair is much brighter silver and my glasses aren't that dark. But you get the idea. This is a typical work outfit. I usually wear my hair up, but my updos don't photograph well from the front. I look a little pinheadish. Not that there's anything wrong with being a pinhead ...

I'm a terrible model and a terrible photographer, but I've gotten pretty good at life, so I'll take it! Today I am 57. Gray hair, a bit of makeup, no botox, no shame.

Live long and prosper.

Declaring a war on seriousness

I miss being irresponsible. Before I had a mortgage. Before I switched from having a job to managing a career. Before I knew what a 401K was. Before I worried whether Social Security would be there for me and whether I would have enough money to live on when I got squeezed out of the workforce for being too old. Before I cared about health insurance because who was going to get sick?

It seems like there was more to stoke the fires of our silliness in our less responsible days. A couple of us have this theory at work that people can be divided into two categories -- those who read MAD Magazine as a child and those who didn't. And those who read National Lampoon as an adult and those who didn't. I loved both, so for many years there was a monthly dose of hilarity to keep things out of perspective.

I remember getting my brand-new issue of National Lampoon and curling up in the tub to read it from front to back. Laughing until I snorted, calling my husband in to hear excerpts he didn't want to hear because he was kind enough to let me have it first. My favorite was "Tips and Tales from Bernie X." Bernie X was a New York Jewish cabbie who told these fantastical stories about everything from hunting Nazis to hooking up with hot women and driving celebrities across the country.

Everything is so serious now. Like many people, I read a lot of my news on the Internet, and I'm the one who reads the comments at the end of the article. There are a lot of hateful people out there sharing their spiteful observations about seriously depressing news. And the stuff that isn't serious isn't necessarily funny. So much of today's humor is focused on the horrors of reality, like People of WalMart -- it's a titillating train wreck but not what I would call humor.

Finding humor on the Internet is not the same thing as blocking out an hour or two to read a magazine from front to back. Snippets of humor here and there. Not enough to transform your thinking and not enough to transform your day. Just a little pressure valve, but it's better than nothing. I recently discovered The Fluffington Post. I especially like the cat section.

The writing reminded me of another old favorite -- the Weekly World News. I wondered if the same people were behind both publications. The print version of WWN disappeared in 2007, and I didn't know until I Googled it that it still exists on the Internet. WWN was famous for Bat Boy. One of my favorites was a headline, "Baby born with button nose." They doctored a photo and put a real button on a baby's nose. Maybe you had to be there, but I remember reading it on a camping trip and laughing until I cried.

As I've aged, I've noticed less humor in my life. Or maybe as we get older, we don't find as many things funny as we once did? I don't think that's the case. I think we get caught up in the responsibilities of life and forget our inner child who just wants to crack up.

So ... I'm declaring a war on seriousness. Humor and joy is the fountain of youth, and finding these treasures reminds me that I need to incorporate more silliness into my life -- books, magazines, movies, experiences.

Any suggestions?

Pulling your own strings revisited

In my last post about pulling your own strings, I described my visit to the eye doctor, where I dismissed the offer of a retinal scan because I viewed it simply as another revenue stream for the medical practice. I also dismissed dilation because I was too busy.

Check out the comments. Cameron said, "There is no way to see some serious problems at the back of the eye without dilation. I have had cataracts, an injured retina and multiple major eye surgeries. Two of my problems would have been missed if I had had a superficial exam."

Jeanette wrote, "I was diagnosed with glaucoma at age 55 and am now on a three eye drops per day regimen to save my eyesight. A routine superficial eye exam wouldn't have revealed the problem."

I was beginning to think I had this all wrong when I received this email from a long-time reader who is 53 years old. To protect her privacy, we'll call her Anne.

I’m all for pulling my own strings. My past medical history is a testament to that. I seem to annoy specialists because I won’t do what they tell me, simply because I don’t think they have all the answers or even the correct answer often. One specialist sacked me as a patient because I wouldn’t go along with his methods and I dared to challenge him on his medical knowledge. With the influence of pharmaceutical companies and each doctor peddling their preferred instrument of torture, I find it easy to walk away and feel as though I retain a sense of control of my own health at some level.

Validation. I'm thinking, whew, I'm not as wrong as I thought. But Anne continues.

I would like to share with you that I too had been offered the retinal scan over the years and rejected it. I felt it was another money maker for them. A few months ago I decided, “What the heck,” and paid the $25.
 
It showed a choroidal melanoma. Eye cancer. Five in a million chance.

P.S. I have attached a photo of my eye cancer.
 
The cancer is the large grey area between the optic nerve (large white dot) and the macular (black dot).

As you may have heard me say before, there are no good cancers. Choroidal melanoma is a bad actor with a high mortality rate. According to Medscape, about 30-50 percent of patients with choroidal melanoma will die within 10 years from diagnosis and treatment. Death is usually secondary to distant metastases such as the liver.

So much for thinking I had this business of pulling your own strings figured out. I am alive today because great medical practitioners properly treated me for advanced stage ovarian cancer. But they might have discovered it in its early stages and given me a better prospect for long life if they hadn't fucked around so long in the months years leading up to my diagnosis. If I knew then what I know now, I might have been diagnosed at stage 1 rather than stage 3c, the last stop before stage 4, which really is the last stop.

Some of the other comments on the last post mirror my own exasperation with doctors. And those comments are just as valid -- thank you for sharing them. We have all had close encounters of the worst medical kind, and your perspective is welcome!

None of this is easy. While we do need to be sharp consumers, it's so hard to know which end is up. The dentist has now slipped in an extra fee for an "oral cancer" exam. Insurance doesn't pay for it -- it's instant cash for the dentist. But somebody's life may be saved because they had the exam. Same with the retinal scanning. Look at what happened to Anne.

Still, as much as I care about my health and want to be smart about my choices, I don't want to live my life in fear. I'm not signing up for the full-body CT scans I see advertised in the newspaper. There is such a thing as medical gluttony. Somehow we need to find the balance between being proactive and being paranoid.

Thank you, readers, for the enlightenment. I'm sorry I didn't think about people whose lives have been altered or saved by competent medical professionals -- including eye doctors. I should know better. That said, this has been an illuminating discussion, and in a way, I'm glad I was wrong. Sometimes being wrong and being willing to talk about it takes you to new places, and maybe we all walk away with a more balanced perspective.

And thank you, Anne, for sharing your cancer story. Welcome to the club nobody wants to join. In case you haven't already read this, be sure to check out Stephen Jay Gould's, The Median Isn't the Message.

Here's to you, Anne, and to defying the odds!

The power of pulling your own strings

I had my eyes checked yesterday, and I think I figured out why young people can find us so damned annoying.

Before I actually saw the doctor, a young female assistant named Tiffany or perhaps Amber took me into a prep room to do the puff test and some other pre-screening activities. She popped me in front of the OptoMap Retinal Exam machine, and I said, "Oh, this is the Opto thing. I don't want this test."

I view it as just another revenue stream for the vision care place not a medical necessity.

She said, oh! We do it anyway, and if you choose not to have the doctor read it, then you don't have to pay for it.

I said, oh! Since I am not going to have the doctor read it, let's move on, please.

Tiff was not amused.

Then we get into the actual examination room, and she calls up my records on the computer. She said, "We'd like to dilate your eyes today."

I said I'd rather not if I can help it. I've got to get to work. She huffed and puffed and said, well, the doctor might ask that you make another appointment, because the OptoMap and dilation are the only ways to measure the health of the eye.

To this I replied ever so politely, "Thank you. I'll be sure to ask the doctor about that."

He comes in, and I said I'd rather not have my eyes dilated because I had to get to work, but if he thought I needed to, I would listen to his reasoning. He didn't seem wigged out by that at all. He said, well, let's take a look. He did the eye exam and blasted a bright light here, there and everywhere and finally said my eyes looked great. See you next year.

Not to disrespect any professional, but really? I'm just supposed to do whatever you say? I understand there are risks associated with my choices, and I accept those risks. I'm not mean or nasty. I simply ask questions and state my preferences. My husband asked his dentist and his dental hygienist how much radiation exposure was in his dental x-rays, and I think they are both still in the fetal position.

We are smarter and stronger and less fearless than we once were. We have the skills and the courage to ask questions and speak up. To pull our own strings. These are qualities young people are still developing, and sometimes they get annoyed that we already have it. Yay for us.

Who said aging was a drag?

I posted this photo on my Pinterest page of hairstylist Gun-Britt Zeller. I read she was actually born in Sweden but moved to Denmark when she was 10 years old. The typical picture I post on my Pinterest page draws a few likes, a few repins and possibly a comment. Gun-Britt has received 48 58 likes, nine eleven comments and 107 138 repins as I write this.

What makes her so intriguing? She is absolutely gorgeous, but there's no shortage of gorgeous. Her hair is stunning, but there are lots of women with stunning hair, yes, even stunning gray hair. What I think makes her special is her natural look. Is she wearing a bit of makeup? I think so but not much. Her face is slightly aged, and she has lovely wrinkles. It doesn't look like she "filled in" her eyebrows at all. And her lashes look about as sparse as mine.

I'm impressed. Just last week I actually went to Target and spent $10 on fake eyelashes -- the kind that come in little clumps and are supposed to look great on everyone. I looked ridiculous. Ten bucks down the drain and I said, I will just have to accept that sparse eyelashes are OK. Why is looking like a doll the standard? Eyebrows thin as we age, but most of us dutifully fill them in creating this unnatural line that we think helps add definition to our face. Does Gun-Britt's face lack definition?

To me, she embodies a different definition of beauty. I like it a lot. Sure, she's in a creative field and can look any way she wants. I'm not abandoning my filled-in eyebrows and mascara just yet. My tidy sideswept bangs, low pony and classic glasses from my last post are very appropriate for my job. 

But you know now ... we women are complex characters. I also like the scrubbed and wavy version of myself with purple glasses. All these years I've been trying to find that one true persona like it was the holy grail. If only I had the right hair, the right glasses and a signature style, well, then I'd have it all figured out. It's a weakness of mine -- always thinking about the destination and forgetting it is the journey that matters most.

When I saw Gun-Brit, I saw possibilities and selves yet to be discovered. The best part is that I don't even have to work at it. Just relax, focus on the journey and see who shows up. Who said aging was a drag?

Reinventing your self-image

Aside from my musings about time travel and causal events, I don't believe that everything happens for a reason. However, I do tend to deconstruct life's events -- seeking purpose and somehow arriving at a place where I've learned an important lesson I might not have learned any other way. Then it seems like it all happened for a reason, and maybe that's the point.

The broken wrist has seriously messed with my mojo. Maybe in a few weeks none of what I am about to write will make sense to me, but this is what I have to say right now.

Although the pain isn't so bad anymore, it made me mean. I have empathy for people who live with chronic pain. Pain changes you. On top of that, the cast makes it hard to do the simplest things. Getting dressed for work is a huge ordeal, and I won't discuss matters of personal hygiene.

But that's all temporary, it's getting better every day and being uncomfortable is not what has caused me to reflect on my approach to life. The real issue for me is that my self-image is wrapped up in being a jock. I was not an athletic child, but I picked up sports in my early 20s as a way to lose weight, and I got hooked on the game, hooked on the endorphins that release in the brain during strenuous exercise. Hooked on the feeling of being fit. Just hooked.

I am the queen of overuse injuries. I once ran a 10K race with no training whatsoever and my knees hurt for years afterward. But I was young, and I recovered. I strained my hip flexors racewalking and followed that up with additional punishment to my knees two years ago. My knees still aren't healed, and the whole reason I took up cycling was to give the knees a rest. I tried to build up slowly -- the smart way -- but eventually pushed too hard, too soon. My knees continued to hurt, but I got a hot new bike with the clip-in-clip-out pedals all the jocks use, and I fell and broke my wrist when I forgot to clip out.

As another woman about my age said to me, "We just don't bounce like we used to."

Some women mourn the loss of youth or beauty, but the fear of losing my athletic prowess is far more devastating to me than wrinkles or age spots. My husband kind of chastised me for my lack of moderation, and in one of my pain-induced rants I said, "Well, that's easy for you to say. You just sit back and judge. You don't push yourself or take risks."

And he said, "Yeah, except I'm 62 years old, I'm still running, and I'm not sidelined with injuries."

That is when it occurred to me that I need to reinvent my self-image. If it bothers me so much to be sidelined, maybe I need to look at what I expect from sports. Stick a knife in the spot that hurts the most, and see what oozes out.

My husband says I'll get over this and go back to being my usual self when I am healed. I hope he's right and that most of me comes back, but part of me needs to stay in retreat. I can still participate in the sports I love, but I have to stop thinking of myself as jockier than thou and shoot for having fun and being fit. I can replace the pedals on my bike, ride in a cart when I play golf and walk without trying to set a new world record. I can get back to swimming when the cast comes off, and I will be just fine.

I won't like it at first, anymore than I like all the other ravages of age. But I think aging is only a ravage if you fail to change and embrace the new versions of yourself that emerge.

The gray hairs as a population

I heard a young person at work say in front of a couple of dozen people that it's important to develop a process for transferring knowledge from the gray hairs to  ... well ... everyone else. There was one other woman besides me with gray hair in the group and quite a few men with gray hair. You could hear a subdued gasp. She realized she'd stepped in it a bit and said she wasn't sure what to call this group other than more experienced workers. Someone said that ought to take care of it.

Although I tried to stay out of it, she eventually asked what she should call everyone else. I suggested the brown hairs. I couldn't help myself. Yes, I was kidding. We all eventually agreed on less experienced workers and more experienced workers until someone tells us that's insulting.

Of course, I am proud of my age, my knowledge and my gray, but I did think it was sort of uninformed to round us up by the color of our hair and judge us as a population. But I suppose it's dificult to know where the boundaries are these days. I'm certain she didn't mean it to be insulting. Consultants sometimes use the term "gray beards" to describe learned professionals, but then they don't have to hang around the office explaining themselves either. And the media -- Google "graying workplace" and see what you get. It's not like she made it up.

I felt bad for her. She was right about the importance of knowledge continuity. We can't stick our heads in the sand and pretend there aren't people who are likely to retire with a head full of information somebody needs. What's the right way to have this discussion without lining people up by DNA?