Welcome back to Ancient Wisdom, our new Sunday series in which writers over 70 tell us how they are aging gracefully. Last week, Emily Yoffe wrote about letting go of ambition. Today’s essay, by Mimi Swartz, explores a fraught subject: plastic surgery in your 70s.
When my 79-year-old mother lay unconscious in a San Antonio emergency room, the nurse attending her had some questions. Mom had taken a bad fall while walking her dog on a 100-degree morning in August. Her condition was critical: One side of her face was midnight blue, and X-rays showed her neck was broken; she was “nonresponsive” after being resuscitated by the ambulance attendants. The nurse was moving around Mom’s body in a tiny room, taking a medical history. Attendants had cut off most of her clothes and draped my mom in a sheet. The nurse wanted to know the usual stuff. Age? Previous illnesses? Current illnesses? Finally, she asked about prior surgeries. I answered “none,” forgetting in that fraught moment that my mother had had both knees replaced in her 60s.
I had also forgotten something else. The nurse, a pretty woman with dark hair, had been gracing me with a deeply sympathetic gaze, but with my last answer she looked at me as if she thought I had misunderstood the question. Silence descended. She waited.