Last week, to add to my already established pancreas and heart problems, I was told that I have something called an abdominal aortic aneurysm.
Or I had to attend a “routine” screening appointment anyway, and after the nurse ran her ultrasound device around my big belly for what seemed like ages, the decision was made (smiling) to refer me to a vascular specialist.
Modern medicine always finds new things that scare me, and I have been intelligently informed that I belong to this group of Baby Boomers (those of us born between 1946 and 1964) who are noticeably less healthy than our parents or grandparents (born during or before the war) even though they had to fire Adolf Hitler.
After investigating all this, Laura Gimeno, from University College London, has published a new report: ‘Even with advances in medicine and greater public awareness about healthy living, people born after 1945 have a higher risk of suffering from chronic diseases and disabilities than their predecessors. ‘ she says.
Hitler is perhaps the key. Beginning in January 1940, when Nazi submarines destroyed merchant ships and threatened to starve us into defeat, the Ministry of Food introduced rationing, which lasted for a full 14 years.
Last week, to add to my already known pancreas and heart problems, I was told I have something called an abdominal aortic aneurysm, writes ROGER LEWIS
Paradoxically, everyone became healthier on the wartime diet. You never see fat people in contemporary news.
Everyone had their ration book, with weekly coupons allowing each adult two ounces of cheese, two ounces of butter, two liters of milk, two ounces of tea, two small chops, and four ounces of bacon. People were allowed only one egg. Offal and pieces of whale were available, but not in excess.
As the country sought victory, vegetables were abundant in the plots. There was no gas, so everyone walked.
The rations were enriched with vitamins. Vegetarians hadn’t been invented, so meat provided plenty of protein and iron. The cooking had to be creative, although I’m glad I’ve never witnessed roasted cow udders or squirrel tail soup.
A lot was made with carrots and egg powder. Potatoes were a staple food. I am told that the main side effect of wartime nutrition was increased flatulence. ‘Take that one, Hitler!’ my grandfather would say, even in the 1960s.
But once imports started arriving again, in the 1950s, Baby Boomers began gobbling up like pigs. That weekly wartime diet was something I personally could eat on a normal morning.
When Harold Macmillan said: ‘You’ve never had it so good!’ He could have been referring specifically to me.
It was good, a lot of fun actually, but now we’re paying for it. My peer group, our body mass index off the scale, has problems with obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiological problems and lung diseases.
Everyone I know is bigger than their hips or knees, and the conversation among us men revolves almost exclusively about the prostate. We fall into two categories, the Boomers. There are those of us who shy away from doctors, who fear that letter from the NHS demanding we make an appointment.
I always receive them. They bring me out with hives because the doctors always find something else that went wrong.
It’s my fault. I never liked to exercise, and when I did, for example, waddling to the corner chip shop cleverly named Oh My Cod, I was only yelled at by joggers, cut by cyclists, and extendable dog leashes. They made me stumble.
I found it easier to stay home and laze around, watch TV and call it work.
The result is that I huff and puff going up the stairs, and an air ambulance had to fly to my rescue after a heart attack in a Morrisons car park in Hastings.
But I’m glad I wasted my youth, when I had the chance, on partying late into the night, even if it means everything is catching up with me and I’ve had to become a fan of the elastic waist.
I was in Normandy during the summer. You would have thought I would have learned my lesson by now, but after a long lunch with an old school friend, I fell off the granite steps outside the kitchen and landed in a buddleia bush.
The second category of Boomers are those middle-aged who keep pestering doctors and hospitals hoping that some medical wonder will help them rejuvenate.
They are the people who always pay attention to their annual health MOT and believe that modern medicine will allow them to live forever and solve aches and pains.
If the older generations, that is, those immediately before mine, had mobility problems, they would bravely endure walking short distances or would remain content in their chairs, watching the fire, listening to what Shakespeare called the chimes. at midnight.
The Boomers who bother doctors, on the other hand, seem to think they have the right, even when they’ve probably outgrown it, to skydive for charity or climb Kilimanjaro. The main beneficiaries are orthopedic surgeons. It’s strange that older people try to act as if they were younger, especially when the reality is that they are on their way to a checkup or returning from the pharmacy with another bag of pills.
Because it’s the pills and medical advances and interventions that are throwing us boomers into the purgatory of debilitating ill health. While previous generations seemed to know when to fall, doctors can keep us going and going.
This is the great paradox. We live longer, but we are less healthy and we are rapidly becoming a race of weaklings.
And the next generations are no better. At least we could play in the street, climb trees, we were allowed to be physically active and independent.
Today, parents closely monitor children, teachers paralyze initiative in their risk assessment procedures, and in any case, every hour they can spare is spent alone staring at their smartphones.
When they go to college, having adventures and drinking a lot, which is what we did, seems to be off the menu; Newcomers Week could now also involve monks and nuns. It’s withdrawal on all fronts, with many mental health issues.
As for me, I’m not ready to jump on the water bandwagon and make it to a Boomer spin class just yet. The sun is over the penol as I write and I am reaching for a big one; For now, the aneurysm can wait.
The Erotic Vagrancy of Roger Lewis: Everything About Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor is now available in paperback from Quercus Books.