Every dog has its day

Wayne Clelland joins us again as guest blogger on Realise Your Dream…

In the last article I supplied, I finished up with a little quiz and a bit of a cryptic. For those of you who were curious enough and searched the Internet, you would have found that ‘Alektorophobia’ is a phobia of chickens. More on phobias later.

So what’s the difference between ‘divers’ and ‘divers’? Well, it has its origins back in the days when my wife and I were both registered nurses. Firstly, there are the scuba or deep sea divers of course. The other one originates from a conversation over 30 years ago with a man whose wife had been admitted to hospital.

‘She’s got the divers!’ her husband stated.

‘And how many divers has your wife got?’

“No, no, no, ‘the divers’” he said emphatically. ‘You know….. the diver’s tickle your lights up’.

In fact, his wife had diverticulitis, an inflammation of pouches or sacs in the colon, but he did his best to let us know what the problem was. And so ‘divers’ has been a part of our family’s colloquialisms for many years, along with ‘he’s got sugar you know’, and ‘she’s got ‘waster’s disease’.

And so to this week’s adventure…

Something terrible happened to me last week. 

My wife Robyn was out walking our beautiful two year old dog, Maisie the groodle. Robyn named her after her grandmother. Why her grandmother was called ‘groodle’ is beyond me, but she did live in rural New South Wales so that may have had something to do with it.

Anyway there’s a leash free park not far from us. Maisie was let off the lead so she could run free and chase the other dogs. On this particular morning Maisie was being chased. She was so absorbed in the excitement of the moment that she didn’t see Robyn until it was too late and collided at full speed into her left knee. A trip to the Doctor and a MRI scan revealed an almost complete tear of one of the ligaments holding her knee-cap in place (P.S. the dog’s okay).

We had booked to go on a brief holiday to Tasmania but this was looking doubtful. Also, Robyn had planned to catch up with her sexagenarian girlfriends from school; the ones she walked 309 kilometers with across the north of England last year. They’d organised a four day walking excursion at Mt Kosciusko. All of this now seemed improbable with her mobility seriously affected. She was so disappointed, almost devastated. She’s passionate about being active and maintaining her mobility as she gets older.

So what was the terrible thing that befell me? Well, I now have to walk the dog! I hate walking. If there was some other way for a biped to get around efficiently I’d be doing it. Then of course there’s the other things that need to be done like washing, ironing, shopping, cooking, cleaning and vacuuming. Her accident certainly ruined my life.

As we move towards realising our dreams, it’s these mishaps that give us a not so subtle reminder of the importance of our health and mobility. We tend to take good health for granted and then one day we notice bits falling off, things disappearing, the body changing shape, shrinking, sagging and wrinkling. On a positive note, it’s surprising what wonderful shapes you can make when you rearrange your skin.

Ageing just seems to sneak up on us. We can’t stop it, but there are lots of things we can do to make it more palatable (apart from eating and drinking). Exercise, good nutrition and mental stimulation are essential.

My uncle who is in his mid-eighties is very fit and has been swimming for the past 15 years; no not continuously otherwise he’d be in India by now. He regularly competes in the Australian Masters Swimming Championships. As you can imagine, there are not many competitors in his age group.

The year that he won the 100 metre freestyle event one competitor turned up dressed in his whites and carrying his lawn bowls, another one came the next day and yet another took his hearing aids out and never heard the starter’s gun go off. This is not to detract from his success in winning the event. My uncle has incredible self-motivation which I admire enormously I but struggle with personally when it comes to exercise. I’m hoping it’s genetic so that when I get to 80 I’ll automatically start swimming.

Interestingly enough, the more we exercise and the healthier we live, the more paradoxical things become. On the one hand we have the health professionals and fitness experts helping us to live a long and healthy life. You can live to 100. Then we have the politicians, economists and statisticians telling us to stop being so self-centered. THE COUNTRY CANNOT AFFORD TO KEEP YOU ALIVE. Nursing homes are filling up and THE GOVERNMENT IS RUNNING OUT OF MONEY. Why can’t you die at age 67 like people did in the old days, or at least work until your 70, pay your taxes and then drop dead. Please have some consideration for the younger generation!

They don’t use those words of course, but we know what they’re thinking. Yet another of life’s mysteries.

Next article from me will be: ‘How to Realise your dreams: Complete your bucket list by outsourcing it’.

Wayne Clelland

Wayne has been involved in the financial advice industry for too many years to mention (easily over 20!) Prior to working in financial advice industry Wayne worked for a number of years as a nurse and a nurse educator so has a wonderful wealth of knowledge and experience. Spending most of early life in regional Australia, Wayne brings a dry wit and candor to Realise Your Dream.

Realise your Dream

The Realise Your Dream blogs are written by Peter Kelly and Mark Teale. More information about the authors can be found here