Posted on 04/12/2014 8:17:30 AM PDT by SMGFan
A Jersey City woman who will turn 105 years old on Sunday swears she's found the secret to longevity: dark chocolate and red wine.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
+1
He’s not able to do his former job. Actually he wanted to. OSHA forbid his presence in the workplace with his heart condition. The company insurance forbid his working that job as well (liability). His company (where he got his disability) didn’t have any other jobs they could offer him (wanted to offer him at his age) and just wrote him off to disability. It was cheaper for them to do that than fight a wrongful dismissal suit or pay the extra liability the insurance company wanted.
Liability and health insurance were prohibitive when he looked into opening a fix-it business on his own. And OSHA wouldn’t have permitted HIM to be on the premises doing work with his heart condition at that time.
30+ years ago (he’s ~80 now) there weren’t the same level of medical interventions in heart disease there are now. He had his massive MI right before the introduction of the clot buster drugs. He’s still prohibited from lifting anything more than 20lbs or walking up more than 1 flight of stairs in a certain amount of time. He’s got all sorts of ‘assistance’ equipment in his shop to help him. All the lifting and supporting stuff. He’s got kids and kin who help him move heavy stuff if he has to. He’s not on a schedule with anything so waiting several days isn’t a big deal. Since clotbuster drugs there are very few people with his kind of heart damage anymore. And most of the ones that had that sort of damage are dead now.
Estonian Legion perhaps?
Every day now I have my heart medicine...dark chocolate. A while ago I told my wife I had my heart medicine, and she gave me this puzzled look. “Heart medicine...what heart medicine?” I told her dark chocolate, and she gave me that you’re-an-idiot look. I just laughed. But dark chocolate is good for the heart.
Thanks for the detailed answer.
I generally don’t think taxpayers should be paying liability for someone whose health would support their doing a desk job of some type—but private disability insurance, of course, is something completely different.
I’m glad his ticker held up for so long.
I’m considering retiring on a sailboat and am trying to learn all I can about it.
Would you be willing to share more info about your sailboat and lifestyle decisions?
If so, please PM me...?
Hmmmm....if that’s true....I should live forever!
I agree with you...WORK also does a body good!
My dad was the oldest child of an alcoholic sharecropper and a teenage mom w/o high school diploma. He and his next youngest brother had to do most of the sharecropping AND do their regular chores AND attend school while he was growing up. He left home at 16, in the 10th grade, to help his mom put food on the table for his 5 younger siblings when his dad finally just left them. This was prior to any sort of welfare or food stamp program. He worked in a dangerous and stressful job for 35 years until he had the massive heart attack that very nearly killed him. He’s told me and my brother that if he left us $1 it would be $1 more than anyone ever left him.
His company gave him disability to buy his silence against a wrongful dismissal. Fact is, he wasn’t qualified for any of their desk jobs by then. He didn’t even have a high school diploma or even GED. There simply wasn’t a desk job they could have given him that didn’t involve stress that would have called down the insurance company/OSHA gods wrath.
This is less about goldbricking and more about government regulation and lawyers inhibiting someone who could have very easily started his own business. He did the numbers wrt starting his own fixit business, and assuming he could have doctor shopped to get approval for it, would have had to work 10-12hrs a day just to essentially break even after all the insurance payments for his heart condition. His former profession was off limits as per OSHA.
He wasn’t terribly happy to be on disability. It being a sign of shame for his generation. I think that stigma is why he stays so busy. He’s afraid someone will think he’s goldbricking.
I hope I conveyed well enough my understanding of his situation. Our understanding of an economically deprived childhood has come a long way in the last couple of generations. Fortunately, the bar has been raised.
My dad’s upbringing is why he insisted my brother and I get college degrees. Kid brother does what daddy used to, jobwise. We are much more mindful and attentive to stress related health issues though now. And kid brother at least has a college degree to fall back on.
I think it was the stressful job and the stressful childhood that contributed to daddy’s heart condition. NONE of the relatives on either side of his family tree had any sort of heart condition prior to mid 70’s. His dad’s side never had heart conditions. They all died in their mid/late 90’s. A few of them topped out in the 105yrs range. Dad completely changed his lifestyle though. He doesn’t eat enough to ever be completely full, drinks one cup of coffee/day, never smoked. He eats mostly veggies and scrambled eggs in the summertime. The veg from his own garden. He likes to brag ‘grew everything on this plate’ when he eats. When he’s not puttering around some little old lady’s malfunctioning lawn mower he’s on the phone with his younger siblings ‘running their business’. He’s always been the replacement dad in that family. The younger ones don’t remember a time when it wasn’t daddy’s paycheck that bought the food and even the shoes they wore to school.
Sounds like he’s never stopped contributing.
Nice story. My father is 89 and still going strong (after a little heart surgery himself.)
He had more heart surgery last year to repair a damaged valve (beware long term warfarin use!). He’s been clearing brush at the back of their property for the past week now. His only complaint right now is his knees. Given his age, he’s OK with that considering all the things that could be wrong.
I’ve got several trays of veggies started for him too. We’re just waiting for it to get warm enough to set them out now. I grow the heirlooms he likes and has trouble finding already started at the big box stores. He prefers to grow the ones his mama grew. Can’t blame him.
IIRC he’s not on any meds now either. Not even BP meds. His BP is always excellent. He was on the warfarin and statins ‘prophylactically’ given his condition and age. He’s off the warfarin now, just takes aspirin and got off the statins when he read a little more about them. His cholesterol is fine as well. Always was in fact. He was on the statins because of other ‘risk factors’ (previous heart attack). His heart attack wasn’t because of high cholesterol even. He was 100% blocked in a couple places but his cholesterol was 180 when they checked it with 30yr old technology.
I’m saved!
That makes two of us. I retired in 1999 at age 54 and have never regretted it - not once!
exxxxxxxcuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me
I miss Steve Martin. In his prime, he was the best comedian on the planet.
You go! I’m jealous. :D
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