Tag: aging

Benefits from finding your I

What was your growing-up story like? If we are fortunate, we are in a nurturing environment as we scramble to make some sense of the world around us, with little sense of who or what we are. We are all the sensations we react to, hunger, cold, heat, pain, pleasure, more instinctive than rational. When do we develop a sense of self, an idea of what it is we might want rather than what those around us might wish for us?

For me, the smoke began to clear by the time I was in Grade 5, about the age of 11 or 12. Suddenly, it seemed to me, I had a sense of self, and opinions about what was going on around me in the world. Not only that. The opinions of others were less important. I had begun reading voraciously, learning of a world that had a past that had shaped my present. My immigrant parents’ views had begun to disappear as reference points; my feeling was that I knew more about the real world we lived in than they could possibly understand.

By the time I was in my mid-teens, I felt I was fully in charge of my life. I was under the family roof, but the things going on in my head, the plans and actions I contemplated, were formulated and carried out with almost no reference to parental guidance. I generated the funds to permit me independent action from an early age. Was it just me? Was I the only one who was obnoxiously opinionated by the time he was a teenager? I was fortunate that my parents did not stand in my way. It doesn’t happen to everybody like that.

Gaining a consciousness of oneself as separate from those around us, with an independent will, especially, independent from those in positions of authority, is a big thing. The sense of being an independent identity may come long before we achieve independence, but it surely must come first. We may begin by feeling a rising sense of rebellion, exasperation with the lack of understanding by those around us. We may begin to object to decisions made for us, about us, without consultation. We may begin to object to rules of the game, which we find erroneous, obtuse, nonsensical or unjust. We may say nothing, but a knot of resistance, even anger, may begin to form. Our I begins to take shape. We may even be wrong, lacking all the information needed to make a correct decision. We learn to negotiate those things.

An independent will can form at any age. Sensitivity on the part of those in authority, inviting expressions of opinion, can stimulate development. An authoritarian environment can delay it. Doesn’t it take some people a long time to achieve a sense of I? One wonders at the history behind that. How much goes on in the mind as part of this process? How much conflict does it generate? How many experience damaging environments that prevent a proper development, haunting their adult lives. Don’t some people spend a lifetime in counseling working through their feelings? Don’t some people take pills to quiet the questions? We really have to work through this stuff to become happy campers, to make a success of what we hope to do in life. How many people do I know who, even in their 50s and 60s, are agonizing about relationships with parents that still leave them anxious, angry and confused about their self-worth? How can we successfully interact with a life partner with this monkey on our back?

Yet some of us who have lived through the worst seem to get through it relatively unscathed. Perhaps a parent or family member saved the day. Or they met the right person early on who got them on the right track. Or they just had the right stuff to see beyond the sickest parts of the people they were in forced contact with and sloughed it all off. What we do know is that a healthy sense of I, a healthy sense of self-worth, a positive self-image, is crucial to making it through to adulthood with some chance of happiness. With it, we can handle being knocked down a peg or two by the inevitable reverses we will face over the years. We can pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and step back into the fray.

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero In My Own Eyes has just been published.

A forum on rethinking aging

Gyda Chud of Jewish Seniors Alliance with forum speaker Dan Levitt of Tabor Village. (photo by Binny Goldman)

On Sunday, Nov. 6, 175 people gathered at the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture for the Jewish Seniors Alliance of Greater Vancouver’s fall symposium, featuring Dan Levitt and his unique approach to residential living.

Ken Levitt, president of JSA, spoke briefly about the seniors organization, after which Gyda Chud, co-convener, greeted the crowd and introduced the Three Amigos, Yom Shamash, Ian St. Martin and Steve Glass, a musical trio who urged attendees to join in as they sang and played songs which included “Bei Mir Bistu Sheyn” – and Chud thanked the musicians with “bei undz bistu sheyn,” “in our eyes you are nice.”

Shanie Levin introduced Levitt.

“In continuing the theme of our Empowerment Series, ‘Thriving until 120,’ we have invited Dan Levitt, executive director of Tabor Village, an elder-care facility affiliated with Fraser Health Authority,” she said. “Levitt is also an adjunct professor in the gerontology department at Simon Fraser University, whose insights and leadership on seniors’ care are sought after in Canada, the U.S., Europe and Asia.”

Levitt challenges societal attitudes towards aging by introducing new approaches to residential living. The goal of his talk – Rethinking Aging: Not the Traditional Nursing Home Grandma Lives In – was to start a conversation that reframes elderhood as an exciting stage in human growth and development.

Levitt would like people to discard the stereotypes of aging that have been emphasized by the media. He wants people to remove the word “still” when praising someone who looks good at 75, to refrain from showing surprise at the ability of someone to work at 80, and for people to maintain high expectations as they age.

He cited an experiment in which each of the residents on the first floor of a seniors residence were given an African violet to water, while second-floor residents were told of a doll that was left in the care of the staff and that, together, they had to make sure it didn’t get lost. On follow up, it was discovered that those who were given the individual responsibility to care for the plants thrived, requiring less medication, and their moods were uplifted, whereas those with the collective responsibility did not fare as well.

Levitt said the idea of individual responsibility has been introduced at Tabor Village and the residents are flourishing, as they expect more of themselves and feel increased self-worth. Levitt mentioned one occasion, where a resident remembered her recipe for pancakes and proceeded to make pancakes from scratch for 20 diners. She then approached Levitt, saying: “You didn’t think I could do it, right?” He had to agree, as he looked around the spotless kitchen. She had not only cooked and served the food, she had cleaned up afterwards.

Statistics show that an average of nine medications are given to seniors in British Columbia. Some of these are chemical restraints – anti-psychotic medications – just to alter behavior and make the residents easier for staff to deal with.

One alternative method that has proven effective is music therapy, said Levitt. This therapy enables non-verbal residents to sing their thoughts when speech has failed.

Alive Inside is an experiment by Dan Cohen, which introduced iPods into a seniors home. Listening to the music, each with their own earphones, non-verbal residents experienced an unprecedented improvement. They readily responded to familiar music, singing along. Some were even able to hold a conversation afterward, saying the music gave them hope and happiness inside. Subsequently, a program called Music and Memory was instituted.

In addition, many residences have introduced computer classes, which benefit many residents.

Breaking old policies is indeed difficult but must be strived for, said Levitt. There are many books, videos and films on the subject of dementia and the stigma that is often associated with it. Still Alice and Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me are two examples.

Levitt listed off some “super seniors”: one who had climbed Mount Kilimanjaro at age 90; another who golfed and had come close to beating the pros at age 90; and Olga Kotelko, who ran races, breaking records and winning medals into her 90s (she died in 2014).

There are many experimental and successful programs being carried out, said Levitt. One is Hogeweyk in Amsterdam, a village built and devoted to seniors with dementia. A small Ontario town, Penetanguishene, has recreated a village similar to Hogeweyk and relatives of the residents are reportedly pleased with how happy those living in this community are; residents are able to shop and walk to the market, for instance. In Florida, Miami Jewish Health Systems is seeking to create a similar program – Green House Project focuses on helping companies and individuals convert or build residential homes where every room would have a shower. These residences, which exist in several states in the United States, can provide a high level of care for those who do not wish to be in a nursing home.

Levitt ended his talk with a quote from Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. It is the only thing that ever has.”

Chud thanked Levitt for teaching the audience to think differently, and noted that the success of the event was made possible by the dedicated help of JSA’s office staff. A video taken by Karon and Stan Shear can be found at jsalliance.org.

Binny Goldman is a member of the Jewish Seniors Alliance of Greater Vancouver board.

Good news on Alzheimer’s

For the last three years, I have been researching, interviewing and writing articles for Senior Line, the magazine published three times a year by Jewish Seniors Alliance of Greater Vancouver. In that capacity, I read everything I can about dementia, especially Alzheimer’s disease, medical care for seniors and residential facilities for seniors.

A year ago, I succumbed and started paying for a digital subscription to the New York Times. Using their “alerts” system, my inbox is filled with relevant, current articles on these topics. I scour the media (Vancouver Sun, Zoomer Magazine, Jewish Independent, CBC News Network, CNN, documentary channels, movies portraying Alzheimer’s disease, and online newsletters from organizations such as CARP and COSCO) searching out information about these senior issues. I also began visiting the Louis Brier Home and Hospital regularly, interacting with people with dementia (with the assistance of Davka, my Standard Poodle).

Why was I obsessed with Alzheimer’s disease? The truth is that I was swimming in a turbulent sea of fear, dread and panic – analyzing every forgetful moment and constantly measuring my intellectual capacities, to be sure that I wasn’t “losing it.” This had been going on for the past five years.

My feelings and thought processes began to evolve as I gained knowledge and understanding of the causes, the progression of this condition and, of utmost importance, the changes in attitude towards the management of seniors residences and the programs offered to seniors with dementia. Most surprisingly, among the gloom and doom scenarios of “the grey tsunami” and “the stark demographic shift,” I began to understand that there is actually good news about dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Yes, you heard me: good news!

Today, reaching the age of 100 is no longer shocking. I personally know three people who have reached that age. Seniors of my generation, and the Boomers and Zoomers, are living longer. Within this large cohort, dementia is a product of the natural aging process. The longer we live, the higher the probability of dementia. Is there anyone among you who wants to die at 65 or 71 (the risk of Alzheimer’s begins to increase dramatically at the age of 65)? Wouldn’t you rather live to 86 or 94? Of course! Well then, your chances of having dementia will increase.

At 77, I am more active and more productive than I have ever been. I know that, at any time, I may begin to deteriorate. The influence of genes is crucial: one grandmother had dementia, the other did not. My aunt has Alzheimer’s and, recently, a close relative was diagnosed with the early signs of the disease. I am shocked and saddened, but now I am able to accept the possibility, putting it in the context of the result of aging well and living longer.

What have I learned? Maria Shriver, in her Feb. 25 article on WebMD “We can handle the truth: the facts on Alzheimer’s,” writes “try to put your denial impulse aside and take a hard look at the truth about Alzheimer’s. Because the fear that causes you to deny things – like our risk of getting this mind-blowing disease – can actually be the motivator you need to stop ignoring the facts….” We know the risks and the consequences, but we are in denial and unprepared to deal with it – personally, financially and as a society. It seems that by pushing through my ignorance and my fear, I have come to a place of harsh reality and hope.

The intense desire for the discovery of a cure for dementia, or a preventive strategy for Alzheimer’s disease, is universal. Exciting research is happening in labs across the globe but, until a “miracle cure” is found, let us not refuse to act because there is no cure. Denial is the enemy of hope.

How much do you want to know about your risk of getting the disease? Here is a list of ways to learn more:

  • Review your family history with your doctor.
  • Review lifestyle factors like diet and exercise with your doctor.
  • Review your medical history with your doctor, including questions about brain trauma.
  • Take a genetic test to determine whether you have genes that raise your odds of getting the disease.
  • Get a brain scan to spot signs of the disease.

But, if you are like 41% of the people in the survey “Insight into Alzheimer’s Attitudes and Behaviors,” you have not – or are not willing to – take any of the proposed steps, according to a Feb. 25 article by Ashley Hayes on WebMD. Another 46% say they aren’t worried about getting Alzheimer’s in the future, mainly because they take care of their health and also because they can’t do anything about it. Thirty-four percent of respondents say they’re concerned about getting the disease in the future and, of those, 69% say they’re concerned because they don’t want to become a burden to their family, with 60% concerned because there’s no cure.

Michael Smith, MD, WebMD’s chief medical editor, states, “There is great concern about the impact of this disease, but denial, fear or other unknown factors seem to be preventing us from taking the necessary steps to prepare.”

People do not seem to realize that they can lower their risk. A few suggestions are offered: stay mentally or intellectually active, eat a healthy diet, take vitamins or supplements, exercise at least three times a week and stay socially active.

There is a positive link between physical exercise and brain health. There is a relationship between the foods, drugs, alcohol and nicotine we ingest and their impact on the brain. Hopefully, more informed, more realistic children will notice when a parent’s mental capacities are diminishing (if you haven’t), and they will get us to the physician or gerontologist early, wasting no time; perhaps to participate in a clinical trial or to get a new drug that could slow its progression. Plans must be made, contingency scenarios must be worked out. The best way to break through denial is to challenge it.

The good news

Dementia rates have been plunging. It took a few reports and more than a decade before many people believed it, but data from the United States and Europe are becoming hard to wave off. The latest report finds a 20% decline in dementia incidence per decade, starting in 1977.

A recent American study, for example, reports that the incidence among people over age 60 was 3.6 per 100 in the years 1986-1991 but, by the years 2004-2008, it had fallen to 2.0 per 100 over age 60. With more older people in the population every year, there may be more cases in total, but an individual’s chance of getting dementia has gotten lower and lower, as Gina Kolata reported in a July 8 New York Times article.

The psychological definition of “denial” is an unconscious defence mechanism characterized by refusal to acknowledge painful realities, thoughts or feelings. My anxiety, fear and dread have disappeared. I have faced the dreaded monster, I have embraced the enemy. I now visit with people suffering from Alzheimer’s. I have spoken to my children frankly about my wishes if I should become incapable of handling my affairs. I have decided where I wish to live if I must move into a seniors residence to receive care. I am aware of the newer approaches to residential care and housing arrangements. I have informed myself of the resources that my community can offer me.

Now, every day is an invitation to excel, to learn and to enjoy. I have become ambitious, physically stronger and more committed than ever to appreciate my good health and sense of well-being.

Dolores Luber, a retired psychotherapist and psychology teacher, is editor of Jewish Seniors Alliance’s Senior Line magazine and website (jsalliance.org). She blogs for yossilinks.com and write movie reviews for the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library website.

Between parent and child

When my father died in 2014, I was already familiar with the notion that mourning progresses in stages. These include denial, anger, grief, bargaining and, finally, acceptance, and they are widely recognized by the therapeutic professions.

Two years after my father died, however, I could make an argument for one more item in this neat list. This item is: paperwork. Paperwork that can take months or years to complete while other tasks are shelved, children get older and family relationships unravel.

And so it was that I didn’t really start grieving for my father until two years after his passing. This was the point at which I was finally able to look through my father’s archive. He had a wealth of his professional writing, as well as mementoes from his life in Israel – things I had never seen, never heard about, photos of people I didn’t recognize. Here, now, was another kind of loss: his memories, the languages he spoke, the cultural narrative of the Egyptian Jew who became the halutz (pioneer), the farmer and a soldier.

My grief was further complicated by my father himself: complex, secretive, angry, hard to fathom and even harder to love. But, as hard as it was to love him, it has been just as hard to let go of this contradictory, loving, gifted and extraordinary man, who spoke nonchalantly about his life being “nothing special,” while simultaneously and relentlessly craving recognition for his life’s work.

How was I to experience my grief, work through it in the tidy way suggested by the literature, without feeling like a hypocrite? Every time the sadness bubbled to the surface, another voice cried out, yes, but…. And yet, and yet, and yet.

My father loved trees. He loved the smell of them in Egypt. He loved planting them in Israel, shortly after its independence. After immigrating to England, he started a conservation charity to encourage children to do the same. He spoke fondly of his favorite plants, naming them with relish, acer palmatum, acacia, copper beech, pyracantha, weeping willow, honeysuckle. He talked about them the way other people talk about their friends, and his belongings reflected this after his death. One of his books was called Meetings with Remarkable Trees. It suited him. His meetings with remarkable trees had started when he was still a youngster.

It was also appropriate because, as straightforward as his relationship was with trees, his relationships with other people were confusing and painful. He was seldom content, often angry, and his brain was constantly besieged by business ideas, political observations and diatribes about the state of world affairs. I never saw him make a new friend. He called nobody from his old life and nobody called him. A staunch Zionist, he regarded orthodoxy with disdain. He refused to join the Jewish community and kept us apart from it, too.

But, when he was nurturing his plants, he was in touch with something sacred; this was his worship, his peace and his prayer. He could stand perfectly still, just watching the arc of the water landing on the dry earth, listening to the birds and the wind in the willow tree, utterly alone and completely at peace.

At other times, I tried to look after him. I tried to be his caregiver, his protector. So, with him gone, I felt myself to be – even with a multitude of other responsibilities – rather redundant.

By the spring of this year, I found an uncomplicated way that I could commune with my father: I nurtured my own garden. I thought of him as I watered, listening to the wind in the trees and watching the droplets creating rainbows. The water trickled down the spines of the squash leaves, pooling at the roots. I listened to the birds, felt the sun on my back, remembering the ice-cold glasses of water we’d enjoy together in the summer, the way he taught me to transplant trees, how I was always surprised by how much water he’d use. “Do you really need that much?” I’d ask.

He would collect seeds with a strange sort of compulsion, from public gardens, with no particular method – he would never store them properly or label them but there they were, stuffed in the bottoms of his pockets. Like me, now, collecting foxglove, chive, kale and garlic seeds for next year. Always thinking of the next harvest, another step toward self-sufficiency. “We made the desert bloom. We grew watermelons there.”

When I went to visit my mother this summer, I noticed that her own honeysuckle plant was growing wildly out of control. It had become so heavy that the lattice was falling off the wall of the house and it was beginning to encroach on other plants. The flowers were beautiful and the aroma intoxicating but, according to my mother, the vine was basically a weed. I offered to prune it back for her and was startled when she showed me how much could come off. Like a cautious hairdresser, I asked her, “Are you quite sure?” And she was. Besides, she told me, it would grow back in no time.

As I started to cut the branches, I realized that a good part of this monster was already dead. The branches overhead broke apart in my hands, dropping dry leaves in my hair. It was more than 30 degrees outside and, with older tools and a ladder pitching on the gravel, it was slow-going. I tried to avoid cutting live stems but soon grew too tired for mercy. I hacked at the convoluted, weedy vine and snapped the brittle trunk as perspiration ran into my eyes. As I did so, it occurred to me that something about the honeysuckle felt very familiar. In short, this tangled, complicated plant was very much like my father – extravagantly beautiful, complicated and with no respect for boundaries. One might almost say, parasitic.

And then I noticed what looked like a bundle of dry leaves tucked in the back. On closer inspection, I realized that it was an abandoned bird’s nest, carefully woven from the tiniest twigs with only the smallest space left to hold a few eggs. Right in the middle of that tangled mass of dead foliage, there was a sanctuary. Like our relationship – painful and nearly impossible to navigate but, at its heart, like that nest, there was something to treasure.

In the end, grief is not so much affixed to the image of the parent we have lost, or even the relationship we had. We are not grieving the relationship we could have had, either: we are acknowledging the gifts they did pass on.

My father, teaching me to cut and paste magazines; to write business letters with punchy opening lines; to edit my work, to edit it mercilessly until it was taut like a tightrope, without a single unnecessary word. Sure, he was a merciless critic, but this quality has served me well.  Even as I revisit each sentence of this essay, it is an act of memory, a gesture of thanks to my father that I am so particular, so careful with my words and so determined that they should fall in, militarily, if possible, with my meaning.

In the end, this is how we find grace in grief when our relationship with the dead was challenging – toxic, even. We can choose how we remember, how we grieve and, ultimately, how we live, once our beloved relative is gone.

It is not simply an act of respect, this mourning. It is an act of gratitude, as we thank our lost ones for what they did give us, as we visit all of the unconditional love we can muster for that ancient connection, between parent and child.

Shula Klinger is an author, illustrator and journalist living in North Vancouver. Find out more at niftyscissors.com.

Expert on sundowning

Dr. Brian Goldman (photo from Brian Goldman)

While most people have heard of dementia, many of us won’t have heard the term sundowning before.

According to Dr. Brian Goldman, emergency physician at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, sundowning is generally part and parcel with dementia of various kinds.

“Sundowning refers to a person who is sleepy during the day and very active at night,” he explained. “Almost as soon as the sun goes down, that’s when they become active. The activity can be not just when awake and walking about in an agitated or restless state.… For sundowning to have its maximum impact on the patient and others – the caregivers and care providers – you have to have dementia [as well].

“A person who is cognitively intact, who is simply sleeping during the day and being up all night, would have the cognitive reserve to be able to handle that. They might feel they have a problem, need to see a doctor, or they might rearrange their lives because, when everyone’s sleeping, they’re up, [but] they’d be able to cognitively make sense of it.”

Goldman explained dementia as “a chronic disorder caused by a brain disease or injury. It is characterized or marked by impaired cognition or thinking, memory and personality changes.”

Goldman – who grew up in Toronto’s North York, the heart of the Jewish community – said he is seeing more elderly people with dementia. Often he is one of the first people to notice the symptoms.

“As an emergency physician,” he said, “I would say that an increasing percentage of the patients I see in the emergency department are frail seniors. When I started out in the 1980s, we would see an occasional patient over the age 90, but now it’s commonplace.

“I have professional experience, but I also have personal experience. Both my parents have passed away in the last two years and they both reached frail senior years. My mother had dementia. My father did not.”

Why some dementia patients also suffer from sundowning while others do not, Goldman said, remains a mystery. As well, the number of people who suffer from this newly defined condition of sundowning is also unknown, with estimates ranging from as low as two to three percent of people with dementia up to more than 60%.

“It has been said that sundowning tends to occur when the person is in unfamiliar surroundings, though it can also occur in the home,” said Goldman. “It’s well known that some people with dementia have damage to the pathways to their brain that recognize light coming in through their eyes and stimulating a part of the brain called the pineal gland. The pineal gland secretes the hormone melatonin.”

Melatonin is secreted somewhere around 2 or 3 a.m. every morning. It resets your body’s circadian rhythm. If that pathway is disrupted, it makes sense that your sleep-wake cycles would be seriously disrupted.

Another theory is that people who sundown are dreaming vividly. They are flipping between the awake and dreaming states quickly and frequently. And, again, because they don’t have the cognitive reserve, they do not know if they are dreaming or awake.

There is not yet a lot known about sundowning and another phenomenon known as delirium.

According to Goldman, delirium is confusion associated with the activation of the fight or flight response along with symptoms that include tremors, shaking, a fast heart rate, sweating and dilated pupils. These symptoms are sometimes also referred to as “toxic delirium.” People with toxic delirium have a rapid, traumatic change in their demeanor. Triggers of toxic delirium are often fever, urinary infection, pneumonia, flu, or even a heart attack.

“You recognize it if you see a sudden change from what the person was doing a week ago,” explained Goldman. “They look sick, sweaty … something seriously wrong … and there is an underlying cause. Treat the cause and the toxic delirium goes away.

“Sundowning is a more chronic pattern that can go on for months. There is no vast dramatic change. The only change in pattern you might notice, wherein dad or mom wander off at night once a month, then it becomes once a week, then every night. It’s a gradual pattern.”

Ways to help this condition, according Goldman, include regularizing a sundowner’s routine: having meals at set times, a set time for exercise (but not at night), set times for bathing and toileting (like washing in the morning or before bed), and the like.

“The experts say that caffeine should be avoided,” he added. “You want people to walk. Walking is good for them. Visitors are good, but probably not close to the time they’re going to bed. Also, reduce noise from TVs and radios and address the lighting in the room, ensuring you don’t have harsh lighting that could cast disturbing shadows on the wall.”

Besides these steps and before turning to sleep medication, Goldman advised exploring some other preventive approaches. Light therapy has shown some promise, he said, affecting patients in a similar way as those with seasonal affective disorder. This involves getting special light-generating therapy units, which are available without a prescription and come with instructions on use.

When it comes to lost brain pathways, Goldman sees the technique as especially helpful when approached in a “use it or lose it” fashion. “If you want to build up a reserve, this might be a way of doing that, with year-round light therapy,” he said.

“Certainly, making them busier during the day with exercise and other stimulation is the way to go. Somebody with dementia wants adventures in the same way that everyone wants adventures, something new. Keeping to the same routine everyday is helpful for structure, but the novelty factor can be helpful as well.”

Goldman said these practices can offer some relief of the effects of dementia, including Alzheimer’s, the most common cause and form of dementia.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Don’t let age fool you!

He didn’t realize it at the time, but Norm Archeck has been a significant inspiration for me. A catalyst for some of my proudest physical accomplishments.

This story – of one friend motivating another to achieve fitness success – wouldn’t be anything special … if Norm wasn’t 84 years old.

Two and a half years ago, after I had already rid myself of my adult-life-long baby fat, I noticed Norm regularly coming to the front desk of the JCC and challenging anyone within shouting distance to do push-ups with him. Right there. Drop and give me 20. Or 40, in Norm’s case.
Caught in the crossfire one day, my male ego couldn’t refuse the challenge, so I threw in a quick 25. That same ego was forced to up that 25 to 30 the next day. This was really no big deal. Until a couple of months later I managed to push my body away from the JCC floor 111 consecutive times. Yes, in a row.

For the most part I stopped doing push-ups with Norm after that day. But only because I decided it was time to parlay those gains into a more rounded gym routine. Since then I have hit new personal fitness levels again and again, staring down my upcoming 40th birthday like it’s going to put 20 to shame.

Now, there is something to be said about right place, right time, right motivation. I was clearly ready to embrace Norm’s challenge that day. But without Norm it wouldn’t have happened the way it did.

Brushing off everything with a laugh or a smile, Norm is that guy the rest of us look at and say, “I hope I’m doing that when I’m his age.” So when he issues you a physical challenge it’s pretty hard to turn him down.

Throw in three knee replacements, a new hip, a win over colon cancer 15 years ago and open heart surgery seven years later and it’s hard not to smile when Norm says, “Come on, young man. Let’s do some push-ups!”

… in front of everyone you work with.

photo - Norm Archeck
Norm Archeck – you’ll have to train to complete his fitness challenges at the JCC.

“My friends say I’m a nut case,” he laughed while taking a break in the JCC fitness room. “That’s how I live my life. I forget about the things that are challenging me and live my life.”

Norm was an athlete in his younger days, always wanting to push the limits. As he aged his doctor told him that if he didn’t work out he might as well just fold up shop, so to speak.

“He says I wouldn’t be where I am today if I didn’t exercise. And he tells his other patients to just do what Norm does.”

More recently, just to change things up a little, Norm has taken on the plank – a popular core strengthening exercise – as his new daily JCC-front-desk activity.

Targeting an absurdly-long 5-minute plank, he’s come close many times while brushing off non-believers one minute at a time.

He tells a story of being at a relative’s house for dinner recently when his planking prowess was brought up at the table. A burly, middle-aged dinner guest called Norm to task.

“He laughed at me when I said I could do it,” Norm said. “He was kind of a big mouth. So he challenged me and I knew he would struggle. I did it for around four minutes and he quit around two. I get a call a month later and he tells me he has gotten to 2.5 mins.”

So if you are ever at the JCC and you see an old gent sitting on the floor by the front desk, he’s not filming a new “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” commercial. It’s just Norm, living his life on his terms.