by Dr. Justin Varney
Looking around the gay community there aren’t many poster boys using walking aides or sporting grey with pride, yet as HIV medication gets better, we are as a community aging along with the general population.
I was recently asked to attend an advisory group for a small scoping project looking at older people’s experiences of mental health services and as the conversation progressed I was forced to consider my own potential for later life – a reality I’d been avoiding on the basis of a fantasy about having a life ending heart attack while engaged in a torrid sexual encounter with half the English rugby team around my mid 50s.
If I am unsuccessful in finding a life partner, then who will be around to notice when I put the smoked salmon in the washing machine instead of the fridge and forget to take my blood pressure tablets for two weeks. Unlike my heterosexual colleagues I am not procreating offspring to ensure that there is someone who will be popping in once a week to check I’m leaving them the sculpture collection in the will and who will advocate for me if the time comes to go into residential care.
Much as I have abused my body with chocolate and alcohol, the limited dalliance with recreational drugs and my high intake of anti-oxidants (did u know very good chocolate contains anti-oxidants!) means I might avoid early onset dementia, but if it doesn’t work then who will be the person in my life who will point out that I might be loosing my marbles.
My own great grandmother in her eighties started to loose her cognitive abilities, she reverted to padding her nether-regions with torn up rags then stuffing the soiled rags under the bed where my grandfather (her son in law) had to retrieve them when she was out of the room and dispose of them. In the presence of company she was alert and engaging and seemed pretty together up until she passed one week shy of her hundredth birthday, it was only if you spent lots of time with her that you saw the silent decline.
My grandfather, and only surviving grandparent, is still driving in his eighties – well driving is a slight exaggeration since he rarely goes about 25 kilometres/hour. He is mobile and goes dancing three times a week, elderly single men (he’s widowed) are a rarity and come valentines day his doormat is littered with valentine cards. But when I look at him I cannot conceptualize myself, we pay his bills for him and my father put in cable so he can watch sport, will there be someone who will pay my bills when I’m that old or will I be surviving on what little I’ve saved?
So why this little venture into my own paranoia about growing old? Medicine means that most of us can now expect to see our sixties, seventies and eighties. Some of us will find those life partners and have children, but most of us will rely on those ‘gay families’ that inspire us day in and day out built out of nights out, nights in and shared love, so invest in them. Talk to you friends about growing old, about what you want to happen in the end, if they don’t know, then who will? It is up to us in our 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s to invest in our bodies, minds and bank accounts to prepare for old age. If I’m going to be demented, dribbling and in diapers, you can bet your life I’m going to be doing it in style!
more on this topic
[about:senior health]
[sage - services and advocacy for glbt elders]
[gay elders: the second gay health crisis, check it out on queer sighted]
[gay elders: lives of courage, shattered hearts and crushed souls, also in queer sighted]
[gay and gray on barbary lane, check it out on planet out]
[sage - services and advocacy for glbt elders]
[gay elders: the second gay health crisis, check it out on queer sighted]
[gay elders: lives of courage, shattered hearts and crushed souls, also in queer sighted]
[gay and gray on barbary lane, check it out on planet out]
Dr. Justin's bio
Qualifying in 1999 in the UK as a physician, Dr Varney has worked across district general hospitals, general practice and acute secondary and tertiary care before settling in Public Health. Alongside his day job
as a public health professional in London, he has helped found the UK National LGBT Health Summit, is an LGBT advisor to the Metropolitan Police in London and Department of Health for England and Wales and is part of the executive of the Gay & Lesbian Association of Doctors and Dentists. In the small hours of the night while pondering his batchelor status, he manages BearHealthUK , LGBTHealthUK, and has just helped to launch OutProudHere an international queer communitiy activism site following the 2007 Philadelphia LGBT Health Summit.
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