Crisis during mid-life or mid-life crisis?

I've been wrestling with my back issues since my late teens, and a big factor in dealing with them has always been my age. It's one thing for an older person to have aches, pains and difficulties, but quite another for an adolescent. There's a greater urgency to try different ideas, both on the part of the patient and the medical community.

But nearly 25 years have passed since the first time my back went out, and it's getting harder to differentiate between ongoing conditions and the afflictions that spring up naturally (for lack of a better term) in middle age.

I feel like I'm starting to blend in to the great mass of middle-aged and post-middle-aged, where my issues aren't that much different from those of the guy next to me. It's not as if I felt somehow special when I was younger, but I got this sense that because I had more life left, there was more to be done. More avenues to explore when it came to managing the pain and the problems. More, as I said, urgency.

When I step back from this issue and look at it without the inherent self-pity, it occurs to me that the way I'm feeling about my health problems going into this stage of my life is a microcosm for my feelings about midlife in general: inevitable, with new pains and new promise, and probably the biggest pain in the ass since puberty.

Eek

Until a few years ago, I was pretty squeamish about a lot of injuries. But having all the breaks and surgery I've had eliminated most of that. There's one thing, however, that still has the ability to make me stick my fingers in my ears and go "lalalalalala I'm not listening!" when it's discussed: compound fractures. The very idea makes me cringe. I've considered having a medical alert bracelet made that states that I should be shot if I ever see one of my bones sticking through my skin. It's just not a memory I want to live with. I have trouble looking at my gums.

I bring this up because of NCAA basketballer Kevin Ware's injury this weekend, which I didn't see -- I don't watch sports -- but was unfortunate enough to see covered in gory detail (no pun intended) on the web. Luckily I have yet to see pictures. And from complete stranger me to Mr. Ware, you have my unending sympathy.