MOJO: “sex appeal”; “good luck, charm or skill that comes from something magic or supernatural.”
TO LOSE ONE’S MOJO: “to lose one’s confidence, energy or enthusiasm, especially coinciding with a decline in one’s success.”
After several months of what I would call “successful” medical and dental reports, I seem to have lost my mojo this week.
Not the sex appeal kind of mojo. I haven’t had the “sex appeal” kind of mojo since I stopped coloring my white hair, gave up 50 years of wearing vanity contact lenses and stopped thinking of how I could find a half-blind millionaire to finance all the surgery and botox I would need to look remotely sexy again.
I have lived a charmed life in so many ways, though. I’ve been incredibly lucky. But the spell wobbled a bit this week when I had my latest meeting with my ophthalmologist. Four months after I was diagnosed with early glaucoma in my right eye, and after I had begun my nightly eye drops to save my sight, I was back in his chair. With a bright light shining in my eyes, Dr. Yamata meticulously searched the inside of my eyes to get the lay of the land and take eye pressure readings.
I held my breath, expecting good news. I’d come to expect good news. I had mojo!
But it was not the news I’d wanted, even though it was far from a disaster. Nonetheless, it felt just a bit like a lurking disaster anyway.
The glaucoma in my right eye had not responded well enough to the eye drops that I’ve been taking each night at bedtime for four months. He could see some nerve damage. My heart sank. Where was my good news?! Where was my good luck? My mojo!!?
The good news was that something could be done. Another medication has been added: twice a day with this one. Twelve hours apart. (I already sometimes forget my morning and evening meds.) All to keep my ophthalmic nerves from jumping ship and leaving me blind in one eye. (Hmm – are eye patches on a woman as sexy as they are on a man???)
Everything else has been holding steady. Well, there is one more arthritic digit, my right thumb, but I can still successfully paint and do calligraphy every day. My artistic passions are still my mojo! Yet for a bit, as I wound my way home, I felt more vulnerable.
Vulnerability is not destiny, though.
Thanks. This is just a bit of a dust-up. Medicine really does salvage so much that used to be lost. Including sight.
Oh, I don’t really care that much about my sex appeal. But I do care a lot about my state of mind in times of change, when my luck is running low here and there – now and then. I’ve been in training for these moments for a long time now.
Resilience has become the grace that takes over for my mojo when it’s running low.
So I’ve set up Alexa to remind me to “take medication” for my eye drops, just as she already does for a couple of other meds. Reminders that will sound out every twelve hours: “This is a reminder. Take medication.” It’s familiar.
I can’t do anything about luck or charms, but I can do what needs to be done to keep me in as good a shape as I can. And remember to be ever so grateful that my body has served me so well for so long!
Sex appeal? Well, if that’s not a part of my old age – if that’s not my mojo now – I’m pretty satisfied to have good enough eyesight to appreciate everyone else’s. I have some favorites…I’m not blind yet, you know…
And I’m very okay with that.
*******Calligraphy done with Pentel Touch brush pens, for those of you who are into this…
white hair grace 