Proprioception, Concussions, and Getting Old

by Sharon Kayne

Apparently, my proprioception is going to hell. It’s one more sign that I’m getting older and I think that stinks. Proprioception (which, oddly enough, is pronounced pro-pree-uh-SEP-shun), in case you’re wondering, is one of the body’s senses. You’ve probably never heard of it because it’s not as popular as sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste, but it’s very important. Proprioception is the body’s ability to perceive its position in space. It’s what allows us to walk without looking at our feet and stroll through the house without bumping into walls. Just like our other more popular senses, proprioception declines with age. This is why older people fall down more often. Not as often as toddlers, who are just learning to gauge their proprioception, but more often than older children and adults (at least adults who are also not drunk).

I came to this conclusion about my own aging when I fell down the other day. I was taking out the trash, and I was reaching for the back door so I could close it behind me, when my foot, which had not cleared the threshold like I thought it had, got caught. Thanks to momentum and gravity (two nefarious forces that are always trying to get me), I fell back into the house. Since I’d been turning to reach the door knob, I continued turning and landed on my bum (which, at least, is well padded). Then I managed to smack the back of my head against the pointy corner of a door frame. I hit it hard enough to cause a mild concussion and, because it was a head wound, it bled like there was no tomorrow. So, when my husband came to the back door to check on me (the thump and my cursing being the two clues that something was amiss), blood was already running down my neck. Once we got the bleeding stopped, however, he determined that I would not need stitches, so things could have been much worse.

The truth is, I’ve always been something of a klutz. And it saddens me that getting older has made me an even bigger klutz. There are already enough reasons to lament getting older. There is the fact that your jowls and chin succumb to gravity even if the skin on the rest of your face is still where it should be. For some reason your hair loses all its color, like it’s simply too tired to bother being brown anymore—even if, like mine, it was never a very interesting shade of brown to begin with. My hair has just started to gray and while that sucks, I can’t even complain to my friends about it because most of them are already gray. Your skin starts doing all sorts of weird things—getting bumpy and scaly like you’re turning into a reptile. And, I swear, your toenails grow faster than before, even though they’re way harder to reach. I’m really not interested in adding loss of proprioception to the whole depressing equation that is aging. But I suppose that is the prize one receives for managing to survive youth.

In truth, there are a lot of good things about getting older. Retirement is the biggie, and I was fortunate to do that before I even turned 65. I think the best part about being older is that you care a whole lot less about what people think of you. That’s why old people dress for comfort. We no longer care that we don’t look like the latest fashion plate of the well-dressed. We’d rather be able to feel circulation in our legs. We’d rather wear shoes that don’t hurt. And if youthful people—who are hobbling about in their very tight pants and stiletto heels—are sneering at us, we really don’t care. We know their day will come, and stiletto heels and the loss of proprioception will be a very bad combination.

I’m too concussed right now to worry more about it. I think I’ll just take another nap instead.

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