Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon People

People Feature
VIP OD'd
When you're always blown away by the things that happen to you, you get so you start missing being blown away by the things that happen to you.
By David Goodman
[04/14/00]

Nothing Personal
Outback mistake house
Australian paper may face lawsuit for mistaking Natalie Imbruglia's rock star boyfriend for (gasp!) a girl. Plus: Christian Bale puts a sock on it; ABC to run Leo-on-Bill interview.
By Amy Reiter
[04/13/00]

Column
Let us now praise famous wankers
The Sex Pistols were one of the 20th century's best bands -- even if they (and we) were too dumb to know it.
By Cintra Wilson
[04/13/00]

Nothing Personal
The stars can't help it
Gina Gershon wants to pull your chain. Plus: Billy Bob Thornton's strange compulsions; Chicago alderman's way is not Hugh Hefner's; and Monica Lewinsky and Jenny Craig, still an item?
By Amy Reiter
[04/12/00]

Nothing Personal
Don't squish the chameleon
Boy George: Dropping disco balls make you feel like you got something real; Matthew McConaughey: Tips on gettin' nekkid with bongos. Plus: The mysterious case of the missing Puff Daddy.
By Amy Reiter
[04/11/00]

Complete archives for People

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Land of the free, Home of the BRAVE GEEZERS

There are many perks that come with being north of the 60-year mark. Getting up five times a night to take a leak is one of them. Another is looking in the morning mirror to see a haggard old beast scowling back at you. Then, too, there are those midnight moments when your heart launches into a samba and you think, This is it. All your friends and family are off somewhere having the time of their lives, no one around to circle the bed, tears in eyes, to hear your last will and testament.

There are many American and Canadian geezers here in Puerto Perdido. You can spot us easily -- with our prune-like skin, our concave spines, our walkers, our wheelchairs, our dewlaps. We come in November when the snows start to the north, and we usually stay until the rainy season begins in April or May. Some have moved here permanently.

This is the fourth in a series of dispatches from our correspondent in coastal Mexico. Read the previous article in the series, "Henry Miller, hot pants and ants."

We are a heroic bunch, because here we are taking our lives in our hands. People in their 60s, 70s and 80s are what the medical profession calls "at risk." It's the time when one is subject to those out-of-the-blue surprises: sudden heart attacks, embolism, liver disease, strokes and renal failures.

We are living in a Mexican village of 25,000, which has, on a good day, seven doctors. There are a few clinics -- but they are the most basic. There are no CAT scans, respirators, aspirators, defibrillators. If any of us were to come up with an embolism -- that would be it.

We are hours from the nearest sophisticated medical help.

I think we have made a choice to be so far from the up-to-date medical practice and machinery of our time. We've seen too many of our peers hooked up to machines that blink, bleep, transcribe and keep one (barely) alive. We've seen too many of our friends with tubes up their noses, down their windpipes and shoved into other unmentionable places.

We've watched parents and grandparents tended to in a desultory fashion in a nursing home operated by some mega-corporation that sees the bodies of the old in terms of net return on invested dollar. We know that what they call "heroic" measures may leave us not as heroes but ghosts of what we were before.

Whatever we say are our reasons for being here -- cheap booze, dislike of cold, bargain prices -- there is another, unspoken one. We are living dangerously and we know it. In the cities we come from -- Houston; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Sacramento, Calif.; Charlotte, N.C. -- if you wake up one morning with apoplexy, someone calls 911 and in minutes you are in the emergency room of a fancy hospital.

Here, if you wake up with apoplexy, it'll do little good to call 911. First, you'd be lucky to have a telephone. Second, if you manage to reach one of the doctors in town, the best he will have in his bag of tricks is a few pills, a blood pressure kit and a couple of shots that may or may not save you.

Twenty-five hundred miles from the border of the United States and eight hours from the nearest hospital, we geezers have made a decision. When the big one comes, we know in advance that there is a good chance our case will be hopeless.

The bravest of the brave. No heroic measures. And we mean it. We've found a place where all that life-support stuff is far far far away. RIP.
salon.com | April 14, 2000

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

  Get a printer-friendly version

  E-mail a friend about this article

  Backflip this article to find it again

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Search Salon