Hello @bill1001 Nice to e-meet you here on Mayo Connect! I echo @johnbishop and his welcome to this terrific, online community! I'm Scott, a 69 year old widower, who after nearly a decade and a half of primary caregiving for my wife and many 'deferred maintenance' health issues, now find myself also interested in aging appropriately.

As I slowly catch up with my needed health improvements and adapt to my current situation (being a widower, having had a stroke, which left me blind and deaf on one side, and fighting recurrent skin cancer), I focus on trying to live my life in what I call an age appropriate manner.

This was brought to the forefront of my thoughts by two recent events.

First, my best friend, several years my senior, believes we should still be able to do anything we want. So I agreed to join him on a white water rafting trip on a river of Class V rapids. Mid-trip, when our raft hit a boulder and flipped, he and I had to be rescued from near drowning. As I lay on a rock, trying to breathe while coughing water out of my lungs, I realized the mind might want to stay young, but our bodies often dictate otherwise.

The second was the fact, having been a 'dog guy' all my life, I had decided I was past the time of life for a puppy. Long story, but one of my nieces convinced me to put my name on a list for possible rescue adoptions. I agreed thinking I probably would not be called, but at best wouldn't be called for a couple of years if ever. It was less than a month later when I got a call to consider an abandon Lab puppy. I'm not a big one on 'signs' and so forth, but I got that call on the steps of the church my wife and I were married in -- on what would have been our 44th anniversary. I drove the two hours 'just to see' the pup. We bonded immediately and in spite of having to clean a lot of puppy vomit out of the back of my new car, NapaTheLab and I are best buddies. Plus I'm thrilled at the many improvements in my daily living routines she has brought me.

I look forward to staying in touch here on Mayo Connect.

Strength, courage, and peace!