Slim Novel 11 - http://adventuresofkimi.blogspot.com - See Homepage
23. The 105-Year-Old
At end of an alley, Kimi sees a shack – horizontal wood plank, brown and moldy, with panes of windows replaced by newspaper sheets. Sanya slides an old entrance panel aside and, after “Yoo-Hoo”, they enter. A pair of dilapidated wood clogs is neatly arranged on a dirt floor entrance. A raggedy brown curtain blocks the view inside and an old woman's voice shouts “Who?”
As they step up from the entrance and push aside the curtain, Sanya whispers to Kimi: “Mrs. Taniguchi is 105 years old and nearly deaf so we shout”.
Inside to left, she sees recently used sleeping mat and, at center of room, a brown-lacquered low table and on far side, sitting cross-legged on cushion, Mrs.Taniguchi, whose face is lined with tiny wrinkles, and head has sparse white hair, and her body is outlined under gray old-lady kimono that below sleeves’ mid-forearms shows blue, thin, fragile veins on back of hand. The ancient lady puts on a pair of metal-rim, O-shape eyeglasses and leans forward to peer. “Oh, Lady Perfesser!” She strains even more forward to see Kimi. "Hoozat wid ya?”
“My new helper and she has baby in belly.”
“Wazzat, Baby?” Mrs. Taniguchi takes off the glasses, breathes on them to make moisture, cleans them with piece of paper, puts them back on, leans more forward and peers hard at Kimi. “Pregnant? Where’s Master?” (Old way to refer to husband)
“Died in War.”
“I had Master once,” she says pouring tea for three into white porcelain cups
“Rotten cheat, carried on wit’ ever’ servin’ girl, geisha, widow an’ floozy.” She gets up, walks in small, shuffling steps to cupboard and comes back with plate of round, pink rice-dough cakes. She places one each on white plates before Sanya and Kimi and continues. “Last straw wuz when ‘ee start livin’ wid a geisha. I hadn’t minded ‘im sleepin’ aroun’ durin’ day but I want ‘im home in bed givin’ me a spouse's service aforemidnight . Well, this huzzy starts keepin’ ‘im out all night so I decides ta give ‘er a piece a mind. The most purtiest t’ing yuh ever seen she sure were; made up joos like baby doll. Well, when she hears what I has t’say she reckons she wuz willin’ t’give ‘m back ta me. ‘He is a rotten lover’ she sez, ‘she'd only played wid ‘im to get ‘is money and now that wuz run out I could have ‘im back. But she admires ta have one thing in return fer lettin’‘im go. He’d boasted t’her how I wuz a woman could write the Chinee characters and that's why he married me and she admired to ask me could I write a letter to a new client a hers who wuz gonna replace my husband. ‘Sure’ I sez. Den and dere she gets out for me a perfumed pencil, charcoal ink an’ writin’brush and begins to dictate a godawful insincere love letter such as t’lure anodder unsuspectin’husband away from some good wife like m'self. Well, did I have the last laugh! Wrote the characters such a way as would tell any halfwit man he wuz dealin’wid a ignorant gold digger who wuz good for no more denn a roll in hay’an' no pay, and when I finishes da lettah dat dumb dodo wuz so admirin’a my writin’she insists on payin’me a sen penny and she wuz too dumb to fine out‘bout my trick till one day she gets rolled in hay and client don’t pay.” The ancient lady gives toothless laugh “Heh, heh, heh. Brazen huzzy!” She motions Kimi and Sanya to eat the rice cakes and drink the tea, quite pleased with her story, which, Sanya later tells Kimi, she is in habit of repeating to visitors. Kimi wonders what happened to the unlucky husband with such a sharp-tongue wife. Obviously he’d been outlived.
The cake is deliciously sweet, and tangy from brown cinnamon powder on its white dough surface and the tea is mint flavor. Sanya, noting Kimi’s gusto, remarks that Mrs. Taniguchi still has admirers and gets the best black market goods in the neighborhood. The eating ends and purpose of visit – researching longevity – begins.
“Rotten cheat, carried on wit’ ever’ servin’ girl, geisha, widow an’ floozy.” She gets up, walks in small, shuffling steps to cupboard and comes back with plate of round, pink rice-dough cakes. She places one each on white plates before Sanya and Kimi and continues. “Last straw wuz when ‘ee start livin’ wid a geisha. I hadn’t minded ‘im sleepin’ aroun’ durin’ day but I want ‘im home in bed givin’ me a spouse's service afore
The cake is deliciously sweet, and tangy from brown cinnamon powder on its white dough surface and the tea is mint flavor. Sanya, noting Kimi’s gusto, remarks that Mrs. Taniguchi still has admirers and gets the best black market goods in the neighborhood. The eating ends and purpose of visit – researching longevity – begins.
24. Black Blood
Sanya measures Taniguchi's blood pressure, counts her heartbeat and breathing rate to the minute and does a rapid but complete external examination dictating data to Kimi's writing in a small thick black loose-leaf with “TANIGUCHI” on front and pages dog-eared from long use. She expertly inserts syringe-attached needle into left elbow vein, draws sample of dark blood, disconnects blood-filled syringe from needle with quick twist & pull, and connects new syringe filled with transparent amber fluid; then, she has Kimi hold new syringe gently while attending to putting the newly drawn blood sample in 3 glass tubes for testing.
She says, “Very old people have very dark vein blood because the old heart and lungs oxygenate the blood poorly and because the old body tissues use up most oxygen in the artery blood.”
She says, “Very old people have very dark vein blood because the old heart and lungs oxygenate the blood poorly and because the old body tissues use up most oxygen in the artery blood.”
She turns attention to the amber-fluid-filled syringe, starts the injection into the arm vein and has Kimi count 60 as “one kimono, two kimono, three kimono, …” which approximates the second intervals and, using the counting rate, injects slowly. Taniguchi makes a wry face. “I kin taste it like bitter almond and it give pin and needle feelin'. Whyzit make mouth numb, Lady Perfesser?”
“Procaine,” Sanya swiftly pulls needle out and slaps band-aid tight on needle puncture site. “Small price to stay alive.”
Taniguchi laughs “Heh, heh, heh! I don’know what all's thet stuff yer givin’me but sometime make me wanna have a man again.”
“That is from the hormone. Bye the bye, I know a perfectly charming gent of 80, healthy as horse and just lost his wife to cancer and from her last words she said he is still a devil in bed.”
Ancient lady grimaces. “Eighty, djya say? Devil in bed? Coulda been son I never had. I ain't no cradle snatcher, y'know, but guess at my age it don’ matter much; beggar cain't be chooser y'know, so I’ll admire if yu'll send ‘im around to me. M'door's allus open; trouble is no one wants in, now, day or night.”
Kimi cannot resist question. “Old Auntie, you live so long. Do you have advice?”
Ancient lady thinks then smiles. “No advice, dearie. M'livin’to more'n a hundred ain't important compared to what's happenin’here.” She pats Kimi's still slight belly bulge. “Eat well, sleep well and make good baby.”
Ancient lady pours more tea, gets out green bean-jelly muffin and puts it on table then goes and lies down. Sanya is in mood to give thoughts on longevity from her 20-year research, as she senses in Kimi a fine, undeveloped mind. Lonesome to talk, she unloads on Kimi's waiting ear.
25. Hormones
Sanya continues: “Taniguchi is part of research on longevity, not immortality; immortality is only for ignoramuses because death is built into life; it is part of life's definition. I am not interested in keeping ancient persons like Taniguchi going solely to stay alive, I wish to delay aging, end senility, foster longest healthy life. I give hormones to prevent physical deterioration: the sex hormones – estrogen and androgen that in younger person is made in ovary, testes and adrenal cortex. These hormones stimulate growth and improve function of cell. They stop senile change and preserve body and brain in health.
"The age limit of individual life that my research is suggesting is about 120 years. But no one else uses hormones as I do and the hormones are coming from research biologist and 1912 Nobel Prize winner Alexis Carrel at the start from the New York Rockefeller Institute but since 1940 fromVichy, France,
"The age limit of individual life that my research is suggesting is about 120 years. But no one else uses hormones as I do and the hormones are coming from research biologist and 1912 Nobel Prize winner Alexis Carrel at the start from the New York Rockefeller Institute but since 1940 from
“Danger is dose related. At start I gave too much and had a case of blood clot heart attack, also a cancer of sexual organ. From this I learn to base the dose on monthly hormone blood test. Now I give Taniguchi one quarter of the dose I started with.
"Taniguchi is not a best model of hormone's slowing aging change. She is a case of keeping alive beyond normal expectation but also she is uneducated and decrepit. I started her at 85 when she was as you see. The hormones stop her well-advanced aging
"In a Science Civilization future, hormones begun at proper dose in one's sixth decade and continued should help keep one living to about age 120 looking, acting, enjoying and using brain as I do. But luck also plays a hand since we cannot control external events that shorten life, for example an American bomb. Also what one eats, or, I should say, overeats has strong influence.”
"Taniguchi is not a best model of hormone's slowing aging change. She is a case of keeping alive beyond normal expectation but also she is uneducated and decrepit. I started her at 85 when she was as you see. The hormones stop her well-advanced aging
"In a Science Civilization future, hormones begun at proper dose in one's sixth decade and continued should help keep one living to about age 120 looking, acting, enjoying and using brain as I do. But luck also plays a hand since we cannot control external events that shorten life, for example an American bomb. Also what one eats, or, I should say, overeats has strong influence.”
Kimi, who is listening with partial understanding, suddenly realizes Sanya must be giving herself the hormones. It explains her slim youthfulness, huge energy, and the embrace that was not motherly or sisterly. Sanya pauses to pour more tea while, in the corner of the room, the ancient lady snores.
26. Autopsy and Research
“Hormones are part of anti-aging, or as I prefer ‘Healthy Longevity, or HL.” Sanya fixes Kimi with a serious look. “In science we are precise. We define terms."
"So what do I mean by HL?” Seeing an ‘I don’t know’ in Kimi's expression, Sanya explains. “A rhetorical question, dear, meant for me to answer."
"Membership in my HL club begins on achieving one's 80th birthday on one’s feet and with one's wits and wit, by which I mean thinking well and with a sense of humor. It is not only living long but also with full control of body and full use of mind.
"So what do I mean by HL?” Seeing an ‘I don’t know’ in Kimi's expression, Sanya explains. “A rhetorical question, dear, meant for me to answer."
"Membership in my HL club begins on achieving one's 80th birthday on one’s feet and with one's wits and wit, by which I mean thinking well and with a sense of humor. It is not only living long but also with full control of body and full use of mind.
“Hormones can slow aging in every cell, but” – Sanya pauses for effect – “only if they can reach the cells through the blood. That gets us to the most important behavior in HL – keeping arteries healthy, which means flexible and smooth walled and unblocked. One can get hormone shots against aging but it will not prevent the arteries hardening and roughening internally and then clogging.
“Autopsies are at the center of my research. The Eta people have nothing against autopsy and I give cash payment for it to a deceased's family. Twenty years of autopsies combined with studying the nutritional and longevity history in the autopsy cases have answered questions on the aging of arteries and given insight into cause and prevention. These data show non-infectious, non-accident, non-cancer deaths come from clogged arteries that strangle and starve the brain and heart. My neighborhood research reveals that, on average, females die of old age five years later than males matched in all other ways of living and this gives hint for my idea that because men smoke tobacco, drink too much alcohol and eat red meat & salt more than women, this unhealthy indulging and eating causes something to accumulate in their blood that clogs arteries. So I analyzed the clogging deposit and – Eureka
Sanya snaps right thumb and index finger. “A connection of high fat substance with too-soon death in cases of fatal artery disease! Persons with very low fat in blood have healthy arteries and only rarely die from heart attack or stroke before age 100. And my nutritional experiments show that vegetarians who can be convinced to eat a daily quantity that keeps weight a little lower than a normal body weight for the body height have the lowest fatty chemicals in blood, the least artery disease and live the longest.
"One other factor is the pressure of the fluid blood in the arteries. Even with hormones used well and with best vegetarian diet, a number of my study subjects died of artery disease because of high blood pressure. I think it is due to the high pressure pulse in the subjects’arteries constantly banging on the artery walls and causing the artery disease. Important causes of high blood pressure are eating salt and having social stress, and men have higher blood pressure because they have more social stress than women."
Sanya stops her lecture and bids Kimi stand up. “Well I am almost finished; so allow me to continue as we walk to next destination.” With a nod toward the sleeping ancient lady, Sanya stands and Kimi follows her out of the house.
“One interesting fact of the aging-female autopsies is you can always tell an autopsy case that got hormones – not otherwise knowing the history – by the beautiful white strong-looking bones of its skeleton compared to the gray frail-looking bones of old ladies who die many years after menopause without the hormones. But that is just an interesting talking point; it confirms the hormone effect to prevent loss of calcium and broken bones that occurs in very old age”
Sanya snaps right thumb and index finger. “A connection of high fat substance with too-soon death in cases of fatal artery disease! Persons with very low fat in blood have healthy arteries and only rarely die from heart attack or stroke before age 100. And my nutritional experiments show that vegetarians who can be convinced to eat a daily quantity that keeps weight a little lower than a normal body weight for the body height have the lowest fatty chemicals in blood, the least artery disease and live the longest.
"One other factor is the pressure of the fluid blood in the arteries. Even with hormones used well and with best vegetarian diet, a number of my study subjects died of artery disease because of high blood pressure. I think it is due to the high pressure pulse in the subjects’arteries constantly banging on the artery walls and causing the artery disease. Important causes of high blood pressure are eating salt and having social stress, and men have higher blood pressure because they have more social stress than women."
Sanya stops her lecture and bids Kimi stand up. “Well I am almost finished; so allow me to continue as we walk to next destination.” With a nod toward the sleeping ancient lady, Sanya stands and Kimi follows her out of the house.
“One interesting fact of the aging-female autopsies is you can always tell an autopsy case that got hormones – not otherwise knowing the history – by the beautiful white strong-looking bones of its skeleton compared to the gray frail-looking bones of old ladies who die many years after menopause without the hormones. But that is just an interesting talking point; it confirms the hormone effect to prevent loss of calcium and broken bones that occurs in very old age”
Out on the street, Kimi has a wishful-thought: Someday, maybe I can study doctoring and do like Sanya. It is a wild almost impossible dream for an ex sex worker from fisher folk, the result of Sanya’s seed dropped on fertile soil.
27. One Hundred Twenty Good Years
Sanya sets a slow walking pace so she can complete her lecture before next stop.
“Persons who speak of immortality – living near forever – show a combination of selfish wishful thinking and ignorance of biologic basics. We Homo sapiens – Oh forgive me, my dear, you probably have not heard the scientific title for us humans before?”
“Persons who speak of immortality – living near forever – show a combination of selfish wishful thinking and ignorance of biologic basics. We Homo sapiens – Oh forgive me, my dear, you probably have not heard the scientific title for us humans before?”
Actually Kimi had heard it at Seminar. Sanya continues “We humans are each a body of around ten trillion cells – that is a 1 with thirteen zeroes But the most important cells – of the heart and brain – do not replace themselves. At birth we get an abundant supply of these but they do not last forever. Each irreplaceable cell has its own lifespan; it goes through stages of youth, maturation, aging and cell death according to a program; and on top of that there is accidental, irreplaceable cell death from trauma, or from external toxin and disease. As the irreplaceable cells get less and less, a point is reached where heart or brain stops working and we lose consciousness and die. Someday, thanks to the genius of Alexis Carrel’s Nobel Prize work we are going to have successful heart transplant. Brain-part transplant may come later. Such transplants could be because many young persons die accidentally with intact brain and heart. So under best conditions – a lifetime of healthy eating, no heavy alcohol, no tobacco and, added to these key natural factors hormone treatment to preserve a young mind and a social system that minimizes accident, illness and homicide – we could achieve in Science-Civilization a 120-year healthy lifespan ended with painless and efficient suicide or euthanasia .”
Sanya pauses on street corner to let the ‘120-year’ sink in; then fixes Kimi with her deep penetrating eyes. “Keep in mind I am talking about a full 120 years of health, an active, vibrant life during which one gets smarter and constantly increases life enjoyments. Today in 1945, perhaps, if one is lucky, one gets fifty years of reasonably healthy life and twenty or so years of bad to worst health and near the end gets old and everything that goes with that – dementia, feebleness and loss of joie de vivre.”
They cross a road with Kimi thinking about a Science-Civilization where one has 120 years of good brain power, and enjoys life to the end.
On the other side Sanya guides Kimi to a better-appearing house than Mrs. Taniguchi’s but before entering she indicates she wants to cap her lecture with a few more words so they linger just outside.
On the other side Sanya guides Kimi to a better-appearing house than Mrs. Taniguchi’s but before entering she indicates she wants to cap her lecture with a few more words so they linger just outside.
28. A Golden Age from Slow Aging
“I have been talking about Healthy Longevity and not considering how a 120-year lifespan would harm society. Unless and until we are able to establish large self-support populations on Moon and Mars such lifespans with the present uncontrolled human birthrate would be too much. To press a button now and change lifespan from 60 to 120 years means doubling the population in one lifetime on top of the present acceleration of human numbers that Science is certain will bring 6-billion by 2000 and upwards of 12 billion between 2050 and 2100. The global requirements to support everyone's having a 120-year lifespan are impossible today so a world of 120-year human lifespan would have to be a tightly organized Science-Civilization that controls births or that has an outlet in planet immigration and colonization to drain off the excess from Earth.”
Kimi's mind is whirling at the virtual vista – half understood, yet enough appreciated to excite her imagination wildly.
“Beyond the social question is the individual one. I mean individual – one person living 120 years. If you had my experience as a 60-year-old physician who has traveled the world and knows the common folk, you would know that at least 95% of humans have nothing to do in life except wake up, eat, drink, have sex and amuse selves in ways harmful to others and to Earth. In one lifetime not one original or even interesting thought! Why double the duration of that lifetime at horrendous cost to Earth – to the intelligent minority of humans, to the other animals, to the plants and to inanimate nature?
"Merely to keep each individual of this mess of billions of parasites alive a lifetime it needs the slaughter of innumerable animals and plants and on top of that if we look at history, this creature we call common man – and woman too – has been slaughtering other humans ever since it evolved to what we are today. And it only worsens in terms of numbers as civilization advances in size and complexity and mechanization. And even further, the uglifying of Nature by this huge human mass today with 60 years human lifespan – and imagine if it doubled! To increase lifespan for such purpose is wrong. So ‘Why’ you may ask do I do the research to obtain data on it?”
"Merely to keep each individual of this mess of billions of parasites alive a lifetime it needs the slaughter of innumerable animals and plants and on top of that if we look at history, this creature we call common man – and woman too – has been slaughtering other humans ever since it evolved to what we are today. And it only worsens in terms of numbers as civilization advances in size and complexity and mechanization. And even further, the uglifying of Nature by this huge human mass today with 60 years human lifespan – and imagine if it doubled! To increase lifespan for such purpose is wrong. So ‘Why’ you may ask do I do the research to obtain data on it?”
Kimi by now knows the question is rhetorical and suspects from something in Sanya's tone that it is perhaps also almost hysterical.
“I do what I do because I believe in Science – call it Faith if you will! No matter the seeming hopelessness, contradictions and impossibilities of succeeding, especially today in 1945 here in a dying, defeated nation I must seek after new knowledge, produce data for future scientists and let whatever happens take its course. Mr. Hemingway wrote a book For Whom the Bell Tolls in which hero Robert Jordan must blow up a bridge as part of a plan he is certain will not succeed yet he does not desert his mission. He knows he is a key in a plan which may not succeed because of imperfections of others but cannot succeed if he loses his own faith and avoids responsibility for carrying out his mission and blowing the bridge. We are all of us each one small voice but let us each who work for a Science-Civilization future make our one small voice at least count.
“In Science-Civilization a 120-year lifespan will not produce jaded pleasure-lovers. A high-IQ, well psychoanalyzed moral person who can function intact for 120 years will become astoundingly productive as his or her life progresses in a setting of learning and art and healthy body joy. What inventions! What progress of scientific knowledge! What new great art! What advances in esthetics of joyful living! A Golden Age from slowing aging!”
Sanya suddenly stops. “I am near my end and I tell you this because I sense in you a true daughter, a New Age child.”
They stand silent for an instant before another house then Sanya draws aside its sliding door and calls in “Yoo-hoo, who is home?”
To read on, now, click 11.(29-32)
Secrets of Cancer
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