SDS 900: 95-Year-Old Annie on How to Stay Healthy and Happy

Jon Krohn: 00:03
This is episode number 900 with 95-year-old Annie.

00:16
Welcome back to the SuperDataScience Podcast. For episode number 900 day, we’re doing something special, like in episode number 800. My grandmother, Annie, now one year older than last year, a sprightly 95 years old, is my guest on the show.

00:30
During the episode, Annie details challenges she’s encountering at 95 and how she’s overcoming them with key takeaways that are relatable to listeners of any age. All right, let’s jump right into our conversation. So welcome, Annie. You’re my grandmother, or as I say in Ukrainian, my baba.

Annie: 00:47
Yeah.

Jon Krohn: 00:48
So it’s episode 900 that we’re recording today.

Annie: 00:52
That’s great.

Jon Krohn: 00:53
Yeah, you were in episode 800, you were the star of the show 100 episodes ago. And on that one, we talked about what life was like before electricity and running water. I learned a lot about that. But then we actually, we had you back not long after that in episode 816 because we had… After episode 800, lots of people asked me on, they said they’d love the episode, and then people also asked if we could do an episode where I tried to explain what I do for work to you.

Annie: 01:26
For work.

Jon Krohn: 01:27
Yeah. So people can go back and listen to-

Annie: 01:30
Listen to that.

Jon Krohn: 01:30
… yeah, 816 if they want to. But today, for episode 900, I’ve got a few different topics. One of them I was thinking about how amazing it is, you just celebrated your 95th birthday.

Annie: 01:42
That’s right.

Jon Krohn: 01:44
You had lots of visitors and phone calls. Very popular.

Annie: 01:48
Birthday cards.

Jon Krohn: 01:49
Yeah.

Annie: 01:52
Yeah.

Jon Krohn: 01:52
And yeah, you’re still living on your own in 95, which not a lot of people are doing.

Annie: 01:56
No, I know.

Jon Krohn: 01:57
And you’re still very funny.

Annie: 02:01
I am. I am.

Jon Krohn: 02:02
Yes, you are very sharp. And so, yeah, one of the things I was thinking about that we haven’t talked about before, in episode 800, we talked about what it was like living before electricity and running water. And something else that you experienced when you were much younger was between 1949 and 1952, so about 75 years ago, your husband, my grandfather, he built the house-

Annie: 02:26
He did.

Jon Krohn: 02:27
… that you’re still living in.

Annie: 02:28
We’re still in it.

Jon Krohn: 02:29
Yeah, exactly.
Annie: 02:31 And it’s great.

Jon Krohn: 02:32
It is great. And so what was that like? Today, probably not many people, maybe I have some listeners out there, there’s so many of them, maybe some of them have built a house or something. But most people you think, okay, you call an architect and then you call a construction company and people come in and build it for you. So do you remember, what was it like for him? How did he get started?

Annie: 02:56
Well, he had help.

Jon Krohn: 02:58
Oh, he had help?

Annie: 02:59
He did have help, especially putting cement, the foundation. And well, he did the woodwork, the frames, but then putting the brick, he had someone putting the brick on the house.

Jon Krohn: 03:17
Okay, okay. So he did the wood frame?

Annie: 03:19
Yeah.

Jon Krohn: 03:19
Wow. That’s still pretty amazing ’cause you think-

Annie: 03:22
And he did the floor.

Jon Krohn: 03:23
He did the floor?

Annie: 03:23
Yeah, the wood floor. And the woodwork around the doors frames, he did that.

Jon Krohn: 03:31
And the electrical work?

Annie: 03:33
He did some.

Jon Krohn: 03:34
He did some of it.

Annie: 03:35
Yeah, but there was so much to do, he had to have help. Yeah.

Jon Krohn: 03:43
What about plumbing?

Annie: 03:45
Plumbing too, he needed help. He wasn’t much of a plumber. He was more electrician.

Jon Krohn: 03:52
I gotcha. Yeah.

Annie: 03:53
Yeah.

Jon Krohn: 03:55
That’s still amazing. So he basically did as much as he could, and then as-

Annie: 03:57
As he could. Yeah.

Jon Krohn: 04:00
Yeah. And still, to think, 75 years ago to put down all this flooring and all the woodwork in the house. It feels pretty sturdy when you walk around.

Annie: 04:11
Oh, no, he made a really good job on it. What he did he did slow, but right. Even he built a kitchen cupboard.

Jon Krohn: 04:27
Oh, yeah, yeah.

Annie: 04:27
Yeah.

Jon Krohn: 04:27
I mean that’s what he was like. He liked to say, “Measure twice, cut once.”

Annie: 04:29
Yeah, that was him.

Jon Krohn: 04:31
That was his saying.

Annie: 04:33
Yeah.

Jon Krohn: 04:34
Yeah, that’s right. He always did a great job with everything. We would work on little crafts. I had a few years when I was in high school that I liked building, they had these rocket sets.

Annie: 04:45
Oh, yeah.

Jon Krohn: 04:46
And some of the rocket sets were very simple, they were for beginners. But I remember working on ones that were more advanced, like one that looked like this famous American plane called an SR-71 Blackbird. And I still have it ’cause it’s a beautiful, it’s a piece of art that he helped me build. I never put a rocket in it and fired it ’cause it looks too pretty. Yeah. And so did a lot of people, 75 years ago, were other people also, was it more common for people to be building their own house or was he kind of unusual even back then?

Annie: 05:21
He was unusual. All these people, they had contract.

Jon Krohn: 05:24
All your neighbors?

Annie: 05:25
The next door was contractor and they were builders for other people. And adding too, he was an older guy. Well, at that time I was so young, yet he was probably 50 or 40. To me, he was old.

Jon Krohn: 05:44
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So did most of the stuff, did he learn this because he was also at work, he worked in a machine shop, so he was very comfortable?

Annie: 05:53
Comfort, yeah.

Jon Krohn: 05:57
So you live in Niagara Falls and Niagara Falls is famous for having big waterfalls, which they can use for power generation, hydroelectric power.

Annie: 06:05
Yeah. And he also built a clock in Queenston, big parts. And well, your mommy would know even better, because they usually talked together.

Jon Krohn: 06:19
Yeah. Well, I’ve got some pictures up here and I’ll put them in the show notes. So it’s a big floral clock. It’s gigantic. It’s like 30, 40 feet wide. I’m not sure exactly.

Annie: 06:28
Yeah, it’s wide. And people, when you go on Sundays or holidays, people all surrounding taking pictures. It’s so beautiful.

Jon Krohn: 06:38
It is beautiful.

Annie: 06:40
Yeah.

Jon Krohn: 06:40
But that’s got to be some of the least complex things that he did, because I remember he would give us tours of the hydroelectric plant underneath the waterfall, and he was responsible by the end of his career, he was the foreman for the machine shop.

Annie: 06:53
Yes, he was.

Jon Krohn: 06:54
And so he was responsible for building these gigantic turbines, I guess you would call them.

Annie: 06:59
Yeah, that’s what they called them.

Jon Krohn: 07:01
And so they’re also like 30 feet wide, but they have to be exactly precise down to tiny, tiny, tiny fractions of a millimeter.

Annie: 07:11
The hair, thinner.

Jon Krohn: 07:11
Hair thin. Yeah, exactly.

Annie: 07:15
Those measurements cost him a fortune because-

Jon Krohn: 07:20
Yeah, they’d have to make special tools just to measure.

Annie: 07:22
Tools, yeah, and he would make sure that was the right size, ’cause he was a foreman, so he had to do it right.

Jon Krohn: 07:33
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, I guess that’s what gave him the skills to be-

Annie: 07:37
To be good.

Jon Krohn: 07:39
To be building his own home, too.

Annie: 07:41
Oh, yeah.

Jon Krohn: 07:42
Well, very nice. And so, well, he’s not with us anymore, but you do have someone else around these days. So I have a dog now who’s eight years old.

Annie: 07:53
Eight years old. Yeah.

Jon Krohn: 07:56
And since he’s been about seven, he’s been living mostly with you.

Annie: 08:01
I think even more than a year.

Jon Krohn: 08:04
It’s true. It’s almost two years now, it is. But he’s getting close to nine years old.

Annie: 08:09
Nine years old. Yeah. But I just love him. He makes me happy. He kind of looks at me. He’s just like a little boy.

Jon Krohn: 08:17
Yeah, a little person.

Annie: 08:18
A little person.

Jon Krohn: 08:21
Yeah. It’s nice how much he makes you laugh and-

Annie: 08:24
He does.

Jon Krohn: 08:25
‘Cause you had dogs growing up. Were they different because they lived outside? Mostly they weren’t?

Annie: 08:31
They were farmers dog, like getting the cows and horses. And they were big dogs. They weren’t cozy. They slept outside or in the barn with the other animals.

Jon Krohn: 08:48
Yeah, it’s hard to imagine my dog doing that, Opal doing that.

Annie: 08:51
No, he’s-
08:51 But he’s tiny.

Jon Krohn: 08:51
He’s 12 pounds and he just likes snuggling up. I think that’s his main job.

Annie: 08:58
Yeah, that’s his main job is snuggling and looking at me, “Are you okay?”

Jon Krohn: 09:04
Yeah. Yeah. He likes to take care of people. And lately, so in the past few months, you’ve had some trouble with headaches and dizziness, because up until a few months ago, you could also drive all the time?

Annie: 09:16
Yeah, I drove, and now I’m scared to drive ’cause just in case of something happen.

Jon Krohn: 09:22
Yeah.

Annie: 09:23
Yeah, I drove, and went to church by myself and did shopping by myself, and went to visit doctors. But now I do get little help.

Jon Krohn: 09:34
Yeah, exactly.

Annie: 09:36
My baby daughter, she’s helping me.

Jon Krohn: 09:38
Yeah, my mother.

Annie: 09:39
Yeah, your mother is right.

Jon Krohn: 09:42
And yeah, so you’re getting a little help, but still you’re able to-

Annie: 09:45
Yeah, I still do things on my own.

Jon Krohn: 09:47
If you’re on your own in the house for-

Annie: 09:48
Yeah, because she lives in Waterloo, so she has to go home to see her house, so then I stay by myself.

Jon Krohn: 09:57
Yeah. Yeah. And something that’s been important through this is, so hopefully the headaches and dizziness, maybe it’ll even go away so much that you will be comfortable driving again someday, maybe.

Annie: 10:07
Oh, I hope so.

Jon Krohn: 10:09
And a big thing that’s helped has been physical therapy.

Annie: 10:12
Yes, I am. My dizziness has gon. Sometimes comes back in my knees. They were so bad now. Now I’m in pain, but not in that sharp pain here.

Jon Krohn: 10:28
Yeah. So it’s an interesting thing, because you started going to the physical therapy because the headaches, the dizziness, it was so bad.

Annie: 10:34
Bad. Yeah.

Jon Krohn: 10:36
But actually, that part, which is why you started going there in the first place, has started to get better enough, that now, as of your most recent session, they started working on your knees, which had been causing you problems for decades.

Annie: 10:49
Yes.

Jon Krohn: 10:50
And you said right before we started recording, you said how you’re walking around today and it’s much better than it has been in years.

Annie: 10:58
Oh, yes. I mean, there’s a pain, but not that sharp pain. It’s amazing. I could walk, I could go, but before the therapy, I could hardly walk. Well, now it’s so great, it’s really… And he says he’s going to do more.

Jon Krohn: 11:20
Yeah. It could get even better.

Annie: 11:22
Go and get better, so-

Jon Krohn: 11:23
You’re going to be doing cartwheels.

Annie: 11:24
Yeah.

Jon Krohn: 11:28
And yeah, so I guess kind of a lesson here is that for a while, I think you were probably… When those bad headaches, paralyzingly bad, you just had to lay there.

Annie: 11:42
I could hardly see and-

Jon Krohn: 11:43
And you couldn’t sleep.

Annie: 11:44
Couldn’t sleep.

Jon Krohn: 11:46
And so initially, I think a lot of people kind of have this instinct to see what happens, to have it go away on its own, and maybe you just kind get used to that kind of thing. So I think an important lesson here is that for a lot of problems that people have, it could be-

Annie: 12:01
There’s help.

Jon Krohn: 12:02
There’s help. Exactly.

Annie: 12:03
Yeah. So people should go for physiotherapy like I did. And first, I thought, “Oh, they’re not”… Because I went to another person and they were working, but they weren’t doing nothing for me.

Jon Krohn: 12:19
Yeah. That’s the thing, is that maybe-

Annie: 12:21
You have to go to the right one.

Jon Krohn: 12:24
Exactly. And you probably don’t know. You’ve got to try a few. It depends depending on what somebody is being affected by. It could be a different kind of doctor or therapist, and the first person you go to, maybe they just don’t have exactly the specialization you need, but after trying a few different places.

Annie: 12:42 Yeah. Well, that’s the third place, because the other one, second one, they were even-

Jon Krohn: 12:49
Even worse?

Annie: 12:51
Yeah.

Jon Krohn: 12:51
So that’s good. That shows the importance of persevering there. Where you go to one, it’s not that good, you go to a second one, it’s worse.

Annie: 12:57
It’s even worse. So here, you pay money in your-

Jon Krohn: 13:04
What did you get for it?

Annie: 13:05
Yeah, he talks and then goes away. But once I saw this third one, I knew I’m going to get help. Somehow I had that feeling, and sure enough, I’m getting what I wished for.

Jon Krohn: 13:22
Perfect.

Annie: 13:23
Yeah.

Jon Krohn: 13:24
Perfect. Yeah, so hopefully, maybe we’ll end up having an episode in between as well, but hopefully you’ll be back for episode 1,000 and we’ll hear about how you’re driving around.

Annie: 13:36