Swimming Pool Tales.

    As I was dressing in the men's 'Locker Room' after my work-out at the Y swimming-pool and squeezing for some room to change, the man next to me struck up a conversation.
     "Looks like winter is here." A common enough opening gambit in Canada.
     He was a  fit- looking man, of about seventy-five.
     I answered, "Are you going to get away this winter?"  A common enough retort to his comment.
     "I'd love to, but my wife and I just got back from an extended holiday."
     I asked. "Where did you go?"
     " Israel," he responded, "ever been there?"
     "Yes," I replied.
     "I went as part of a tour.  As a matter of fact, our pastor  is of Jewish lineage and was a wonderful guide.  Only one month ago I was standing on the Golan heights overlooking the Galilee.  A magnificent sight!"
     "And you know who are the happiest people in Israel?"  he asked.
     I waited for  the answer.
     "The Palestinians," he answered.  "They are happy they live in Israel, not on the other side of the line.   To tell the truth, I would never have known there was a war going on.   I  felt safer than I do in Toronto.   When we went into a restaurant or a coffee-shop and saw the boys and girls with their machine-guns hanging over the back of their chairs, it was  re-assuring, not threatening!  It's an amazing country."
      He had volunteered all this before I had told him I was Jewish.  
     "Ever been there?" he asked.
     I told him I had spent several  months in  Beer Sheva at Ben Gurion University on sabbatical as a visiting professor and of my journeys in the Negev Desert with a Bedouin family medicine resident assessing outpost medicine in the desert.
      He said, "I couldn't believe it.  The whole country is a Silicon Valley.  Microsoft here, Google there, Alcatel-Lucent, BMC, Intel.  There was no end to them!  The whole nation is abuzz with industry and creativity.  An amazing country!"
      And it is!  I often ponder the sickness that leads so many who benefit from their creativity and inventiveness consistently malign the State of Israel.
     But then I really do know and understand it; and so do you.

    Recently, while swimming my laps at the Y,  I ran into an almost middle-aged man, who used to be one of my residents soon after I moved to London, a mere twenty or so years.   I recall being at a resident party when he and his wife and young baby were guests a few years later.
   Although I hadn't seen him for a long time when I asked him how old the baby was now and he told me fifteen I was taken aback.  He also proudly told me she was a upwardly bound competitive swimmer.   I learned about the ridiculously early morning swimming meets that he was committed to driving her to.
   "How old are you now?" I asked him.
   "Forty - five." he answered.
    I couldn't resist telling him that my parents, loving as they were, sent me out to play in the street, where I almost became a cricket star, until I hit the ball through someone's glass window!  Anyway, I got more exercise than I needed bicycling to and from school each day, about 45 minutes each way.
    He understood and smiled.

     I'd hardly parted company with my ex resident when I saw an  old surgeon acquaintance who I hadn't seen for quite a while.  He was one of the  'fit' geriatric group and I  knew he was a lot younger than me.
     "Still doing eighty laps each  time you come out?" I asked cheerily."That must be about five km, "
     "Actually it's two," he  said, smiling.
     "I haven't seen you for quite a while," I said.  "Finally giving up the ghost ?"
     "No," he answered, " my wife is seriously ill, and not doing very well after cancer surgery.  I don't like to  leave her alone for long, but I just have to keep swimming or I'd be no  use to her or to anyone else."
     "That's terrible," I said, he had shared the diagnosis with me and there really wasn't much hope. "I hope she'll do better after the surgery," What else could I say?.
      He smiled sadly, "Thanks, I better keep swimming and try to complete forty laps today before I go home."

      I kept swimming, hoping I  would finish off my exercise program, such as it is, on a more happy note, when I ran into my Dutch lady.  Once folks know you were once a doctor, you have access to their innermost secrets (including what they think of their own current doctor).   Nevertheless, this delightful lady was born during WW2 in Holland and has some stories she tells in her upbeat animated and humerous way that would make your hair stand on end.  She swims energetically and when I remarked on it, she said she has to because she is booked for knee replacement surgery, first one next month and the second in a few months time.
     "I have to do at least forty lengths (a kilometer!) several times a week. I've got to keep really fit, so they don't cancel my surgery," she said and added,"and to maintain my sanity!"   
     She lives out in the countryside, won't be able to drive for a while and her aging elderly husband seems on the brink of losing his driving license due to increasing cognitive impairment.    
     Getting old ain't for sissies!