A dear friend sat with a plastic surgeon recently, as stunned as she was offended. Her breast, it seems, can’t be reconstructed right after her upcoming mastectomy for reasons irrelevant here. The shocker wasn’t the news; it was the M.D.’s attitude. “Why would you care?” the doctor asked uncaringly, although not in those exact words. “After all, you’re 75.”

Seventeen or 75, we’re women and we care about looking like a woman and feeling like one. How dare that doctor dismiss her concern! To point, my friend isn’t an invalid living her final days in our beautiful world (although, knowing her, if she were she’d be dabbing on lipstick around an oxygen tube). “Bertie” is an attractive, active and independent person who happens to be facing the inconvenience of treatment for Stage 1 cancer. She’ll have surgery; she’ll recover; she’ll be at the canasta table in no time, keeping score, making wisecracks, and gossiping about the other vibrant ladies with equally deteriorating bodies in her Florida subdivision’s clubhouse.

As a woman heading into the years of medical maladies, I had two reactions upon hearing about this prissy practitioner’s insensitivity. First, I am so outraged that I have been obsessing about the doctor’s gall since I heard what she said. What woman wouldn’t care about having a blank space where her breast used to be? How can a seemingly intelligent woman (Dr. Cold) be so callous to another female’s desire to maintain an essential part of her feminine physique? Second, I see Bertie’s situation — being a lively, on-the-ball spunkster who apparently looks insignificant to strangers — as my path. I doubt any of us escape that kind of diminishment unless we die before our bodies slowly betray us.

Like many healthy middle-aged women, I’ve long wondered how my elderly friends came to while away countless hours in doctor’s offices, to be stuck swallowing rainbows of pills three times a day, and to evolve to a slow and careful gait when once they bolted like I do from place to place.

Then one day, during a dental cleaning, my hygienist froze up and asked, fright in her voice, “Has anyone ever mentioned a black spot on the floor of your mouth before?” Likewise, my eye always feels as if it has dirt stuck under the upper lid, causing me to contort my face to gain 30 seconds of relief.  Do I have to mention that my knees sometimes hurt?

These are small matters. The oral issue was a harmless “amalgam tattoo,” caused when I had old fillings replaced. The eye is an annoyance but not dangerous. The knees are at Step 1 of wearing out.

But these trivial issues, these physical inconveniences, these pesky aches, pains, irritations and growths, are the start of aging. They’re camouflaged by a confident gait and a hearty handshake. Yet over the years, as I head into my 60s, my 70s, my 80s, my 90s, they’ll affect me more. They’ll have company. Misbehaving organs, easily fractured bones, and wrinkles I care not to envision … by the time I’m 75, they’ll have me looking like a little old lady who wouldn’t give a thought to having my boob sliced off and not replaced with a suitable fake.

Oh  my.

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