Living Well March 19, 2008

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

By Teresa Griswold

Aging gracefully and healthfully
Jackson Hole, Wyo.- When my first column came out two years ago featuring Jackson resident and nonagenarian Inger Koedt, she was recovering from emergency surgery to alleviate an intestinal blockage that occurred the night before. Resting in a hospital bed the morning the column appeared, Koedt was not the picture of health depicted in the story that highlighted her vital and active lifestyle at the age of 91.

The headline read “Inger Koedt’s Secret,” and a friend peeked into Koedt’s hospital room, humoring her: “I just wanted to look at this healthy woman,” she said, referring to the article. Koedt laughed and continues to be amused by the irony of it.
Recently, we spent an afternoon together, during which Koedt shared experiences that reveal something about her spirit if not her secret to longevity. An exuberant woman who exemplifies healthy aging, Koedt is now 93 and going strong.

Last summer, she backpacked in the Gros Ventre Wilderness for six days with her son Peter. She covered nine miles on the first day while carrying her own pack, though she acknowledged it was small and not too heavy.

She was 62 when she took up mountain climbing, but always loved the outdoors. Growing up in Denmark, she preferred climbing trees and swimming to indoor activities.
Koedt explained what it must have been like for her mother to come to terms with her daughter’s sportiness back in the early 1900s, comparing it with a childhood prank. The children would put one duck egg into a nest with chicken eggs and “when the little duckling hatched and took to swimming, the mother hen was terrified for her chick,” she said with a sly smile.

Koedt has a bumper sticker on her car that reads “need less.” She just finished reading and enjoyed “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini and is in the middle of “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain” by Oliver Sacks, which she described as fascinating and funny. She subscribes to simple wisdom taught to her by her father such as “always follow your intuition” and “never let the sun set over your anger.”

On the counter of her modest kitchen, there are about eight bottles of natural supplements, like turmeric along with a bottle of baby aspirin, all of which she began taking several years ago after being diagnosed with colon cancer. Prior to that, she took a daily multivitamin and no other medications. Surgery cleared her of cancer, and she opted against radiation and chemotherapy, choosing to maintain the quality of her life because of her age. She receives acupuncture treatments regularly.

In her ninth decade, she has a different feeling about life. She said death is not something that is in the far off, distant future like it was when she was young. She said, “You cannot think that in 20 years, I am going to do this.”
In some ways, you get more out of life when you’re old. “You accept more and have seen more,” she said. “Life is more enjoyable.”

When you get older, she said, you no longer have to pay attention to what day it is. “Your time is your own,” she said, relating it to some of the best times in her life, those that were spent in a summer house on the West Coast of Denmark on the North Sea. There was no electricity and for weeks, they had no idea of what day or time it was.
“It was just being,” she said. “You eat when you’re hungry and go to bed when you’re sleepy. Modern life has come so far away from that. Even people on vacation do not know how to slow down and just be.”

What is her secret? Is it staying active, living simply, enjoying the outdoors, reading and learning new things, relying on medical intervention when necessary, or being in the moment? She said there is no secret, but added, “I was a born optimist and that has helped. Some things in my life have not been easy, but I’ve remained optimistic.”

Courtesy photo
Inger Koedt is an inspiration to many in Jackson.

PERMALINK:
Living Well March 19, 2008 | Planet JH News Article: Living Well

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