When the gods want to punish us, they answer our prayers.
Oscar Wilde

The Senior Center science class softened my recent widowhood—we read ScienceNews, a weekly magazine filled with mid-level science sophistication. The class offered me structure and companionship.

The medical section was placed after the astronomy update that explained the expanding universe and the ripples in spacetime caused by colliding black holes. We often skipped the ripples and jumped to the human evolution side of history, especially our interactions with our  Neanderthal cousins, who ruled the planet for 100,000 years before we nudged them out of existence. Next came the article about a new drug for the treatment of progeria. The story caught my attention, like spotting the first hummingbird of spring kissing my trumpet honeysuckles.

I’m a retired family physician, and I know about progeria. Everyone has seen the memorable photographs of the patients—they are the children, who by the age of two, look like they were shaped by ice tongs.

ABC Pharmaceuticals, located in Alameda, California, a city situated between Oakland and San Francisco, had developed a drug that slowed the progression of this rare and bizarre mutation by delaying the accumulation of an abnormal protein in the patient’s cells. Balding, muscle wasting, and wrinkled skin were postponed for several years. The medication was not a cure. Progeria was still fatal, causing death in the late teen years with heart attacks and strokes.

“Pay careful attention to this groundbreaking article about progeria,” I said to the class. “Look at everybody here. Please look around.” I pointed at my classmates in turn. “Every person sitting here is balding and wrinkling and has muscle wasting. Stand up quickly and you’ll know what I mean about the weakness.” I stopped for a moment to catch my breath, and in a quieter voice said, “Don’t you think we all should be taking this medication?”

Our classroom coordinator pointed at me with her index finger and said: “In this class, Roger, you must raise your hand and be recognized before speaking. And we never, never, allow personalized comments. Let’s move on, shall we, and finish the black hole story.”

Our coordinator, a retired college biology professor who came of age at a time when “girls” weren’t interested in science, was adept at keeping the class on track and was tolerant of our shenanigans. The rest of us were science autodidacts, and not especially skilled at it—especially about black holes.

“Spaghettification,” she said, pronouncing the word like a reading instructor: “It happens when entering a black hole, never mind the Bolognese sauce.”

I phoned my broker, purchased two hundred shares of ABC Pharmaceuticals, and emailed the company, asking when human trials were starting. The idea of “normal aging” was discouraging. Yet that concept was accepted by almost everyone, including my physician, who was too young to understand my plight. My elderly neighbor always reminded me: “Roger, getting older is not getting younger,” but she said it in Yiddish, which made the truth seem more disheartening.

Dorothy Regan, assistant research chief of ABC Pharmaceuticals, informed me they were organizing a Phase One study. Their mice with the programmed single mutation causing progeria were living longer with the medication. “You should see how high they jump when we shock them with our electric probes,” she wrote. “They are like baby kangaroos. If you would like more information and are interested in volunteering for the study, read the attachment and complete the questionnaire.”

“Dorothy,” I wrote back, “baby kangaroos are called Joeys, and they spend most of their infancy in mom’s pouch, so I suspect they don’t jump around much, but as soon as I discuss this study with my children, I’ll complete the questionnaire. Aging is the pits. I just lost a ping-pong match with my twelve-year-old grandchild, and she spotted me five points.”

I also knew about Phase One studies—the investigational drug would be administered to healthy subjects. Only after the medication had been proved safe would it be followed by Phase Two and Three testing, to see if the drug worked.

“Join,” my family said. “God Bless,” they said in unison, glad that I might be involved in something that could be helpful to society. And there was the bonus of seeing me occupied and out of their hair. It had been a long year without my beloved Betty. With all the different breast cancer drugs around, why hadn’t we found one that worked? Her summer dresses, her hairbrushes, the photographs I hadn’t given away occupied my morning dreams; and the replaying of the eventful days we shared still ended in tears.

We try not to, but we all have our favorite child. Anna, the million-dollar-an-hour lawyer, who was now working for Planned Parenthood, said: “Dad, go. It will re-establish your feeling of worth.” I also loved Natalie, the oldest, but Natalie was her momma’s child, musical, quiet, organized to a fault, who would only laugh and shake her head no when I invited her to  join Anna and me in a game of HORSE.

I whizzed through the medical questionnaire, and ABC Pharmaceuticals invited me to join them. I would participate in a myriad of tests during a four-to-six week stay at the hotel near their headquarters. A first-class ticket on United Airlines  would be in the mail, and there would be a driver waiting for me at SFO (San Francisco International), waving my name on a lettered poster.        

Normally first-class passengers drew my ire, unless it was me sitting in the plush seats. The extra money spent on first-class travel could feed a homeless couple for a month or more. That look of superiority the privileged class gave you was meant to hurt as you struggled toward the economy seating ghetto with your carry-ons.

I sat by the window, piling up my tray table with information about progeria and the studies already performed by ABC Pharmaceuticals. My well-dressed and inquisitive neighbor interrupted me after noticing my medical paraphernalia and inquired if I was a doctor.

“Yes, I’m a doctor,” I said. “I’m a pediatric oncologist heading to San Franscisco for our annual meeting about medullary angiosarcoblastoma in infants. It has always been a fatal disease, you know, but there is a new glimmer of hope. Do you want to see photographs?”

That always works—I was able to travel in silence.

Twenty of us for dinner mixed with company bigwigs at the hotel. Twelve men, eight women, six people of color, two of Asian descent, all appeared healthy and happy to be away from wherever we came from. It is said that older people begin to look alike, but not us. We covered the spectrum of humanity, and the variety was reassuring—we would be the first humans to take the medication. Mice and beagles remained well, despite hefty doses of the drug.

We heard background information about the drug, named PGN1. It blocked the enzyme that made the protein progerin insoluble—the latter accelerated aging. 

ABC Pharmaceuticals was to be held blameless for untoward events, and we agreed not to discuss our participation with anyone except immediate family members. Medical care and a life insurance policy were provided. My table-tennis champion granddaughter might become $100,000 richer if something happened to me. Daily blood testing and daily interviews regarding our health would take place when we lined up to receive the PGN1 tablets.

Much like students on a college campus during introduction week, we circled and eyed and smiled or frowned at one another until three or four days into the dance, when a routine was established. Exercise, swimming, walking, reading, and lunch we could do solo, but we spent dinner together. The jockeying around for seating was a gentler jostle than in our high school and college days, and at times we were a boisterous group.

Unlike a Florida gated community with seniors tooling around on golf carts, waiting for happy hour and Fox News, we were a more liberal group, health conscious and grateful for our own good health and longevity, although we never discounted enjoying happy hour with California wine.

Cynthia and Alfonse and I became attached. Our smiles were simultaneous, and if we had attended IVY league schools, we wouldn’t show up for dinner wearing the school sweatshirt and/or headband. 

“What’s your story?” Cynthia asked me. “I’m loud and inquisitive,” she said,  not waiting for a response before sitting down. “How do we sneak some extra wine around here, and should we splurge on the red or the white? Do you even care about the color?”

Alfonse echoed my sentiments about aging and his incessant concern that we had stopped contributing to society. “We feel purposeless,” he said. “It’s like having subtitles in a porn movie.” 

Our group had rules. Grandchildren photos could be shown only once. And since there was little chronic illness to discuss, the doctor and hospital grumbling was at a minimum.

There were stories—old people love to tell stories.

Andrea said her family had a treasure hunt on special occasions—birthdays, graduations, etc. To establish equity between the tottering oldsters and the sprightly youngsters, anyone 25 years or younger received their instructions in cursive.

Frank said senior dating choices were easy: “Just ask the women if they have contact with  extraterrestrial life.” Although Frank was mainly interested in company for dinner or the opera, he often fell back to his youthful indiscretions and spent time searching for experienced virgins.

Judy had a natural gift for rhapsody, and she was our after-dinner staple for crooning around the piano.

By the fifth day, I was sure there was less of a droop around the edges of my mouth. I took a selfie and sent it to my children for their opinion. Cynthia, now my swimming partner, and Alfonse, my morning gym buddy and bridge partner, agreed with me.

Cynthia was special, an Esther Williams clone, swimming circles around me, laughing at my attire of swim shorts hanging down to my knees and my clinging tee shirt. “Old people don’t like to get completely undressed in an open swimming pool,” I confessed.

It was the twelfth night. I was in bed as usual at 10 pm, in my shorty pajamas, reading. What luck I had, short stories by Amor Towles and Kate Atkinson’s latest had been gifted to me before I left for Alameda. Each one of the stories, seemingly larger than novels, rattled around in my brain, generating ideas that too often kept me awake.

There was a rustle at my door. Hotels don’t have old-fashioned keys; it’s all wireless cards, and I could hear one touching my door several times before I heard a gentle knock. I decided to answer by hiding behind the door, because I didn’t have a robe to hide my shorty pajamas.

It was Cynthia.

“Hey, it’s me,” she said. “I would like to talk. You will invite me in, won’t you?” seeing my hesitation. “Any chance I can also sit down, and I guess you don’t have any wine. But never mind,” she said.

Cynthia was having trouble remembering her everyday chores. “Two others from our group expressed similar changes in their thought processes—leaving the room card on the dresser, forgetting to close the door, losing track of time—that kind of stuff,” she said. “Since you are kind of the unofficial in-charge guy for the oldsters, maybe you could bring this up for discussion.”

“Sure,” I said. “But I seem to be functioning well.”

“Good,” she said, “then you would be a fine spokesperson.”

It was the seventeenth day when I noticed changes. Alfonse became lost in his daily walk around town. Found hours later, he was brought back to the hotel by the local police. I made bidding mistakes during my nightly bridge game and mixed-up spades with clubs. A four-spade contract doesn’t fly when you and your partner only have five of them.

And the chess players started to argue about the length of time between moves. They switched to checkers.

“These little mistakes often happen in seniors when they are away from family and familiar surroundings,” the ABC people insisted. “And although we aren’t keeping track, there seems to be a lot of alcohol consumption.”

The next day, I flunked the serial seven test. It was a standard way of assessing cognition. Seven from one hundred is 93, seven from 93 is 86, etc. How I arrived at 68 and 54 was disconcerting.

Our old friend Dorothy Regan spoke to us that evening: “The blood levels of progerin are at higher levels than we expected. We hadn’t anticipated the large amount present in the normal elderly. Our animal studies have shown that the substance crosses the blood-brain barrier. Temporary roadblocks, but we are stopping the study as of tomorrow. ABC Pharmaceuticals always has your well-being as priority number one, and we have discovered some new and exciting findings with this study that we don’t need to bother you with. The emergency contact people you listed at the initiation of the study have been contacted, and they will be asked to accompany you home in two days after we perform final testing.”

We sat huddled together in disbelief. Our hope for a great medical discovery had disappeared like lightning in a summer storm. Our fantasies were following the second law of thermodynamics, where life only ends up in more disorder. Nothing ever improves.

“Dad,” my daughter Anna said when she arrived, “It’s so good to see you, and you look so well. The flight to SF was routine. Natalie is joining us on a later flight. We want to talk to the ABC people together before going home.”

I was thrilled to have my daughters with me, and I would introduce them to my new friends.

“ABC Pharmaceuticals was quoted in the Wall Street Journal. I read it on the plane,” Anna said. “Their stock price is soaring. They believe they have found the cause of Alzheimer’s Disease.”

“That’s wonderful,” I told her. “I own two hundred shares. But how come Betty didn’t come to pick me up?”

– Michael Ellman