At 81, a New Life at the Gym

Originally published September 8, 1992 in the Boston Herald

We call her Grambo now. Not that she looks like Sylvester Stallone. He's tall, dark, and gruff. She's short, fair, and sweet. He talks like a gangster. She speaks like a queen. He scowls. She beams. 

Grambo, previously known as Grandma, had quadruple bypass surgery two summers ago. Doctors cut her up, replaced veins in her 79-year-old heart with veins from her leg, sewed her back together, and sent her home. She was given a pile of pamphlets about post-surgery activities and diet. She read them, then put them away. She was supposed to walk every day, a little at first, progressing to a mile, but didn't because her leg didn't heal, not for a full year, and she was afraid of falling and breaking a hip.

She didn't follow her diet, either. At first she drank sugarless tea and ate dry toast. But habits of a lifetime are hard to break. What harm could a little butter do? Besides, when you're stuck in the house every, meals become the only thing you anticipate.

And so she put on weight, slowly. The extra pounds dragged her down, made the little walking she did all the more difficult, so she didn't walk as much. It was a circle. She knew it. I knew it. But it seemed that nothing could be done about it.

"I walk," she insisted. But she walked only in her house from room to room, or at Shaw's leaning on a carriage. "I hardly eat a thing," she would say. But she ate the wrong things.

She had one foot in the grave when we went to see her eye doctor in July. The walk from the parking lot to the examining room left her breathless. She said her sight was getting worse. It was the first time I had see her so down. "Your eyes are fine, Peggy. You don't need new glasses. You're doing well. Nothing has changed," her doctor told her.

My mother-in-law sighed. She wanted something to be wrong so it could be fixed, so she could feel better. All five feet of her sagged.

"I don't know what's wrong with me lately," she said. "I can't walk. I can't see. I feel like I'm falling apart.”

Many doctors would have said, "Look. You're old. You have to expect these things. You're not getting any younger.” But Dr. Lambert heard the plea beneath the words. Listen to me, is what she was saying. Help me.

He did. He talked to her. He said, "I understand how you feel. My father felt the same way until he joined a gym. He was 86 when he started working out and it changed his life. He grew stronger. He made friends. He felt good about himself again.”

Dr. Lambert gave her statistics. He told her about a group of rehab patients in their mid-80s whose bone density increased after just a few months of regular exercise. People in wheelchairs progressed to canes. People with canes could walk alone. He offered my mother-in-law a lifejacket and she took it. She didn't say, "I can't join a gym. I'm too old." She didn't say, "I can hardly walk. How do you expect me to exercise?" She said, "Hey, why not? I'll give it a try.”

And so we stopped at a gym on the way home and few days later, joined. Howie Terban, owner and trainer, took Grandma under his wing.

Nine weeks later, Grandma is Grambo, eight pounds lighter in body and soul. She walks without getting winded. She kneels, bends, stretches, even climbs on a stationery bike without help. She eats rice cakes instead of Milano cookies. "Howie would kill me if I ate cookies." She eats chicken instead of beef. "Howie says I can eat all the chicken I want." She's at the gym three times a week, "Howie says continuity is important.”

She's made progress. She's made friends.

Grambo has made herself a whole new life.