So, like you, like every writer, like anyone and everyone who spends a great deal of time at a keyboard, I have eventually found myself stuck in the Carpal Tunnel.
My neurons, upset about the traffic, actually switched lanes and tried to take the Guyon Tunnel across town instead. No good. Blocked. Probably holiday traffic. So, I had to get them fixed.
One of the great mysteries of life is why stuff that is so easy to do is so very hard to undo. Perhaps the Pyramids were a vast mistake, which is why they’re still here.
Anyways, out from under the knife, one more day before the dressings come off, my puppy firmly wedged in my lap and absoLUTELY determined NOT to let me use the voice keyboard on my fold-phone, my mind reels back to things the nurses said to me…
“Don’t worry, sweetie”
“Oh, you’re a funny one”
“Put on your clothes now, cutie…”
Wait a minute.
These are not the words nurses say to virile men of a certain age. Those are not terms of respect.
We use those terms on GRANDMA!!!
OMG! They see me as a GEEZER!
They thought I was a feeble old man!
Sweetie? Dearie?
Pat your hand while you sit in the park and watch the birdies! Feed you milk-toast from a TV tray while watching Matlock! Shoes? Don’t you mean slippers?
How did this happen? How did I slip from cool video producer to vintage cracker-sucker in just one day? Successful writer and author to elderly gent in his jammies in just an hour? Cool guy goes under the knife, wrinkly old geezer comes out. Whaaaaat?
What kind of hospital is this?
I wasn’t scared of the surgery, but I’m sure as hell not getting anything else fixed! Not now that I understand the side effects! The risks are just too great!
Sweetie, indeed…
John D Reinhart 
Celebrate it! I’m a member of a long running pensioner’s group which meets about 3 mile east of Tower Bridge. We’re called The Geezers club.
I’m deathly afraid of becoming one of those old, old people that stand lost and bewildered in line at the CVS, waiting for the pills that will keep them alive for another month, so they can shuffle home to sit in that ancient, overstuffed chair that should have been burned in the ’70s and watch reruns of Kojak and sip soup and, oh, don’t get me started…
It sounds like you guys aren’t quite like that!
Alan, thanks for the comments. You’re always a blithe spirit!