Health

It was now or never. The patient, a 76-year-old laundress in the Dominican Republic, was scheduled for total bilateral knee replacements. But her blood pressure was so high—240/120—that her surgical team refused to operate. The patient’s face was contorted with worry. She couldn’t simply put off the procedure: The operation was part of a philanthropic program; her surgeons would not return to her hospital in Santo Domingo for a year at the earliest. And aggressive drug therapy was not bringing the pressure down.

“Early to bed, and you’ll wish you were dead. Bed before eleven, nuts before seven.” If you are old enough to complain of insomnia, you are old enough to have heard of Dorothy Parker, the priestess of the Algonquin Round Table. I read “The Little Hours,” Parker’s pungent portrait of a sleepless night, as a worshipful adolescent, when it was already more than 20 years old. I had nothing in common then with the middle-aged heroine lying in bed “wide-eyed as a marigold” at 4:20 a.m.

We’ve all been to doctors and other professionals who are quick to advise us how to live and look better, but what rules do they follow in their private lives? NYCitywoman.com recently checked with some of New York’s leading health and beauty experts to learn what one thing they would always do and would never do, based on what they’ve learned on their jobs.

A piercing scream punctuates the air. It is the sound of my sister-in-law, Lori, a 57-year-old M.D. She is shrieking because her back has just sent her a massive shock wave of pain. She cannot move without setting her lower torso on fire. We rush into action, trying to tamp down her agony. My brother, who is also a doctor, gives her medication, and soon she falls fitfully to sleep.

If you’re planning a summer vacation to the Hamptons, Connecticut, New England or any locale with wooded areas, pack extra insect repellent in your medical kit and be sure to read up on Lyme disease, the most common tick-borne illness in the US. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) say that Lyme disease is an epidemic already larger than AIDS, West Nile, and Avian Flu combined.

It’s an annual ritual: Every December, I and my oldest New York City friends—all six of us in our fifties and sixties—gather to exchange gifts. This year, the shutterbug among us also passed out something extra: photos of the wedding shower of our pal Susan, taken 21 years ago at my apartment. Everyone reminisced about how much fun we’d had and the pictures bore that out. Yet I remembered nothing about the shower—least of all that I had been the hostess. That worried me. How could I have forgotten such a major event? Was this a sign that my brain was going soft?

Between Restaurant Week, chasing down the best and newest food truck, and keeping up with the hottest celebrity chef tasting menu, it’s no wonder your skinny jeans are feeling a bit too skinny. Not to mention that every time you turn around someone is inviting you to a luncheon, dinner, or cocktail hour in which “refreshments will be served.” These devilish temptations can really cause a minor meltdown. After all, it’s free or cheap food! And who really wants to pass that up? You do! Yes, really, you do.

Flu is still one of the top 10 leading causes of death in the United States. Forty thousand people will die during a typical flu season, which begins in October; more than 200,000 will be hospitalized because of complications. “Flu can be—and is—extremely debilitating,” says John W. O’Grady, MD, a professor of clinical medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center. “People say they feel like they’ve been hit by a truck.”

Q. In your new book, Treat Me, Not My Age: A Doctor’s Guide to Getting the Best Care as You or a Loved One Gets Older [Viking 2010], you write that just as there is “ageism” in society, there is “ageist” medicine. How can a woman tell if she has an aging-friendly doctor?