It’s commonly accepted that, once we reach adulthood, our bodies cease to grow and instead begin to decay. There is no way to circumvent this most final of destinations, and I’m fairly sanguine about the fact that the low road has no exits. What distresses me more is the ever-accelerating rate at which I’m approaching terminal velocity, to judge by my body’s swelling orchestra of noisy protest at daily life.
Why is this? Why is my frail and feeble frame increasingly plagued with aches, strains and mysterious afflictions? I consider myself to be reasonably healthy in most regards – I eat plenty of vegetables, and I don’t even have an STD – and yet my body appears to have become a repository for things that aren't quite functioning properly. As I write these very words, for instance, my right shoulder has developed a curious cramp, I’m fighting off a faint backache and my left knee hasn’t been right since I woke up a few days ago and discovered that I could hardly put my weight on it, for absolutely no apparent reason whatsoever. Maybe pixies visited me in the night and fucked up my cartilage. A fortnight ago, in the cinema, I tried to take my coat off without standing up, and managed to pull something I didn’t even know I have. I can’t drink coffee on an empty stomach without appalling intestinal spasms, colds regularly turn into chest infections, and I’m increasingly struggling to read in low light. I honestly do wonder what’s going to break/strain/fail/begin to hurt next.
It’s not just me, either. My fiancé claims she can’t remember a week without some sort of mysterious pain or physical affliction, of which her recent hospitalisation was at least a refreshingly unconventional variant. My friends, too, report increasing numbers of body fails, from sciatica and bowel issues to a growing tendency towards sighing as they sit down. I do it as well. It must be catching. Shackleton wing back chairs will surely be gracing our living rooms before this decade is out, and if you don’t know what a Shackleton wing back chair is, (a) I envy you, and (b) ask an old person who has long since lost the ability to spring vertically out of a La-Z-Boy when the doorbell rings.
I often ponder how nature has managed to do such a crap job with me and my fellow homo sapiens. We spent millions of years evolving from plankton to bipeds, and yet we go wrong with terrifying regularity. My own long-term ailments range from the mundane to the exotic - specifcally, a rare muscular disorder, which was eventually traced to Cypriot dairy produce. They didn’t mention that in the holiday brochure. However, my own complaints pale into insignificance compared to more life-threatening conditions like organ failure, or cystic fibrosis, or MS. A well-known journalist buried her husband a fortnight ago, after he’d bravely recovered from a stroke and then cancer – in the end, a simple virus finished him off.
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