Michael Mosley’s death reminded me of what an ER doctor once told me

A friend, a Scottish radiologist, used to remark on the number of patients whose scans he would examine, where the medical notes would begin: “This 60-something man was just trying to ...”

The dot dot dot would often involve intrepid souls losing their balance on a ladder, toppling off a roof, or otherwise coming to grief undertaking tasks around the house, farm or garden which they’d once performed with nimble ease.

Dr Michael Mosley in a series about battling insomnia and sleep apnoea.Credit: SBS

Another mate, an emergency doctor on Sydney’s north shore, reports that his work last weekend was dominated by sporting injuries to 14-year-old boys and DIY injuries to men in their 60s.

A few years ago, my own partner was one of those men, falling off a ladder on a second-storey balcony while trying to saw off an overhanging tree branch. The much younger tree surgeon was due to come the following day, but what the heck, why wait? (Luckily a neighbour heard the thump that accompanied my partner’s fall and helped organise an ambulance. He returned home a few days later having recovered from concussion, but with pride severely dented.) The doctors in the ER said they couldn’t count the number of times they’d treated men in their 60s presenting after similar mishaps.

I couldn’t help reflecting on this following the untimely death of much-loved 67-year-old British TV doctor and popular health guru Michael Mosley, who perished after an ill-advised trek across the arid slopes of the Greek island of Symi 10 days ago.

Of course, we don’t know, and are unlikely ever to know, whether Mosley accidentally took a wrong turn or purposefully decided to pick his way through baking, rock-strewn terrain for more than two hours in the hottest part of the early afternoon. He was an Englishman, after all, who’d only arrived the day before from a mild British summer and perhaps forgot, or thought he could beat, the force of the Greek sun.

But it is also possible he was in that same category of person who’d featured in my Scottish friend’s medical notes – determined to push his body to the limit. And yet, it was those same adventurous instincts which delivered in spades for health science and his TV audiences. If only he’d taken a cue from the locals, enjoying a slow coffee in the shade of the town square while the sun gradually spent its heat.

Broadly speaking, the trend towards vigorous exercise well into one’s later decades is entirely admirable. No one wants to be confined to the walker or the rocking chair for the last 20 years of life if they can avoid it. But the modern truism that 80 is the new 60, and 60 is the new 40, ignores the fact that not everyone’s body is going to get the memo.

Some manage to beat their chronological age into submission better than others. Exhibit A: the perpetually sinuous Mick Jagger, touring the United States and Canada at the age of 80 and still able to dance up a storm. The venerable Paul McCartney continues to leave audiences rapt.

But when you see Rupert Murdoch tying the knot for the fifth time at the age of 93, with a woman 26 years his junior, you have to assume he’s forgotten what’s written on his birth certificate. It’s terrific that Steven Spielberg is still making films in his late 70s, but was anyone really convinced by Harrison Ford stepping back into the action-man role at 80?

A Rolling Stone gathers no moss, even at 80.Credit: Paul R. Giunta/Invision/AP

Coupled with all this striving is the mania for ticking ever more weird and wonderful personal milestones off one’s bucket list. Last week my eye was caught by a BBC headline that read “Veteran finishes Everest marathon in citrus outfit”. I checked the date of the story to make sure it wasn’t reheated from April 1. It wasn’t. The intrepid Sally Orange, a former army major, had not only raced around the Everest circuit dressed as a lemon, but is said to have run a marathon on seven continents dressed as a vegetable or fruit. Now with that record, Sally is quite likely to make it into her 70s or 80s running marathons. And good on her. But you would have to say she is an outlier.

Far more depressing are the hordes of cashed-up strivers determined to round out life’s bingo card by getting to the top of Mount Everest – leaving a trail of refuse, human waste and, occasionally, bodies behind them. Nepalese authorities are reportedly trying to enforce new rules requiring climbers to carry at least eight kilograms of garbage when they come back down from the mountain, a small attempt to repair the damage wrought by these grimly labouring over-achievers. I do, however, have a sneaking admiration for 85-year-old Nepalese man Min Bahadur Sherchan, who died in 2017 while trying to regain his title as the oldest person to climb the sacred mountain.

Finally (and I admit, provocatively), one has to ask why it’s usually the 60-something man coming to grief and not the 60-something woman. Dare one suggest that those 60-something men have more in common with their 14-year-old selves than the average mature-age woman has with her adolescent counterpart?

Deborah Snow is associate editor and special writer at The Sydney Morning Herald.

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