The Triumphs and Tribulations of Having Reached One’s 90s

April may be the cruelest month, but the decade of one’s 90s is surely the toughest passage in human life.

I know something about this--a little and learning more daily--because I made it to 90 last November. The creaks and groans, the pains and the padding about all are with you when you become a nonagenarian. But as they say, consider the alternative and enjoy life. You are a lucky one to be alive.

To make it to 90 is a triumph, mostly, I guess, of good genes and good medicine. My dad died during World War II at 67 of a heart attack; he had high blood pressure, as did President Roosevelt, who died two years later. There was, then, no medicine to lower it. In contrast, I’ve been taking the stuff since the late 1950s.

Of course, as you grow older, your body begins to, well, disintegrate. Take my back. A couple of years ago, I began to get occasional shooting pain, becoming stabs of fearful proportions. My orthopedist, after the X-rays and MRI, pronounced it spinal stenosis. In short, the pads between the spinal-cord bones had worn out, squeezing the nerves and thus causing the pain.

But, miracle, there is now a treatment, with success in the 70% range. So I went to a hospital pain clinic, where an anesthesiologist gave me a shot in the back three times, roughly a week apart. Result: blessed pain relief. It’s called an epidural steroid injection. Just hope it lasts so I don’t have to revert to more of those “take every four hours” pain pills.

Before my back went out, my lower legs had gradually--in my 80s--numbed up. That’s called peripheral neuropathy, and there’s nothing to do about it--so far. It limits my walking to a block or so.

These back and leg problems make you wonder about living to 100, let alone to the advanced age of 120 or 125 or whatever the futurists are now talking about. It won’t work unless something can be done about that disintegrating body first.

However, neither back nor leg problem interferes with my driving. And being able to drive, of course, is vital to our way of life--my wife’s and mine--because we still live at home.

Oh yes, we’ve talked about the various retirement places, visited some too. But so far we’re doing OK at home with some help every day: Monday through Friday, 9 to 2; Saturday and Sunday, 10 to 4.

Now, of course, much depends on the health status of one’s spouse. My wife, Lois, in her high 80s took a tumble in the bedroom and broke a hip. That greatly altered our way of life. We had to move the bedroom downstairs to what had been built as the kids’ playroom and then had become my retirement study. Lois had to learn to get around with a walker that she is never without, except when, occasionally, she uses a wheelchair.

The physical disability changed many habits too. She completely gave up cooking: I now do it all. And the shopping. We gave up the second car: I’m the chauffeur. All this means I spend more time helping my wife, and less on myself alone. C’est la vie.

Meals are simple. Breakfast is O.J., toast with jam and coffee, with fruit variations. We have the luxury of lunch being served: soup or, say, a quiche and cut-up fruit. Dinner I cook myself. Tonight, baked potatoes, French beans, filet mignon with mushrooms and a nice Australian Merlot. Maybe fruit or ice cream or a cookie, if we need dessert.

Driving is fundamental to this. The Giant supermarket is close, the rebuilt Safeway will be closer, Sutton Place and Fresh Fields easy to reach. No highway driving for any of that but in some cases it’s necessary to reach doctors and dentists. One important doctor is my urologist because the male curse of the prostate is a close equivalent of the female breast cancer threat.

So far I’ve been lucky; checkups show no signs of cancer. The urologist has me on “watchful waiting,” not a very medical phrase. It simply means the doc figures I’m more likely to die from something else at my age than from the slow-moving prostate. I hope he’s right.

While I was writing that last paragraph, I ran into a mental block trying to remember the term “watchful waiting.” This happens more and more. Like writer’s block. Worst is a block of names. It involves old friends, even close friends. If I just sit there and truly concentrate--bingo--the name usually, eventually, pops into my head. But it’s a strain.

I suppose the key to living in your 90s is to reach that state of serenity that implies a sort of “above it all” tranquillity, that is, unruffled by the exigencies of life, being at peace with the world. Maybe it’s just an acceptance of the idea that you’ve already done your best, there’s nothing more to do, so take it easy.

This requires life lived as a regimen, not necessarily “early to bed, early to rise,” but some pattern. We usually are in the sack by 9:30 and don’t get up until 8:30, a long sleep. If we’re not watching TV (as we did day and night during the post-election playoff), I like to read. Best thing I’ve read lately was “Galileo’s Daughter” (by Dava Sobel), a marvelous account of the 16th century genius and the twin perils of the Inquisition and the plague.

Of course, as an old political junkie--the first presidential campaign I covered was 1936, FDR versus Alf Landon--I read almost all of the newspaper, consuming, usually, all the morning hours. I’m intensely interested right now in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s apparent drive to become the first woman president. I hope I live long enough to see that campaign. Might even be another Clinton versus Bush!

Friends do die, so there are not as many as before with whom to talk about such things.

I’m not much interested, incidentally, in any afterlife: I just don’t believe in it.

Naps also figure in our lives. After lunch, when I’ve propped myself up in a comfortable recliner, drowsiness often turns into half an hour’s snooze, or more. Then it’s 5 o’clock before you know it. Dinner has to be prepared so we can have our ritual 5 o’clock drink. I don’t drink at lunch at home--maybe if we’re out with friends, but that is growing rarer. At 5, I pour my wife a daiquiri from the jugful I keep in the fridge and I pour myself exactly an ounce and a half of Stoli, the Russian vodka. On the rocks. Some days we also have a snack as we watch CNN’s 5 o’clock news.

A decade ago, when I was marveling at reaching 80, I wrote a little book aptly titled “How Did I Get Here So Fast?” (Warner Books, 1991). In it, I said it all came down to “keeping your heart pumping, your noodle active, and your mood cheery.” I find that still true, at 90. Only slower, more relaxed. Tranquil.

At 60 I looked forward to 70, at 70 to 80 and at 80 to 90. But at 90 I’m not really plugging for 100. Too many old friends have made it into their 90s and that’s it. Why not? It’s a challenging age. And worth every bit of the effort it requires.

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Chalmers M. Roberts was chief diplomatic correspondent of the Washington Post from 1953 until his retirement in 1971. He played a key role in the Post’s publication of the Pentagon Papers, the government’s secret history of the Vietnam War. He was patted on the head by President-elect Warren Harding when he was 10 and has had some relationship with all the presidents until George W. Bush.