Thoughts of a lucky soldier – or is it just luck?

I often feel like a lucky soldier participating in a long and deadly battle, a soldier whose closest comrades and friends are constantly being wounded or killed.  The battle, of course, is against the ravages of old age and the challenge is to stay alive and healthy.  All my relatives and many of my friends in my age cohort are already dead.  One of my closest college friends is going in for heart bypass surgery Monday; another has diabetes, has experienced unexplained heart stoppages and is having a pacemaker installed Monday; a close friend is having a hip replacement also on Monday; and two more friends are being treated for deadly cancers.  And the problems are increasingly with people 10-25 years younger than I am.  A son in law has already had two knee replacements and is scheduled to have a shoulder replacement.  I, on the other hand, have had a few less-serious orthopedic problems in the last 10 years like a rotator cuff tear from heavy lifting.  But I seem to be free of the debilitating diseases of old age – cancers, dementias, diabetes, cardiovascular problems, etc.  I just had my blood lipids and C-reactive protein checked and they all came in normal.  My annual physical exams are boring.   I ask myself is this the result of blind luck, having a good initial set of genes, or following my anti-aging regimens?  I clearly can’t say for sure.  However if I am as active, alert, productive and disease-free at the age of 109 as I am now at 79, I will then know the answer.   The anti-aging firewalls will get most of the credit.  And, by that time the firewalls should be far more sophisticated and enable me to keep going for a long additional time.  I am betting on it and have to be careful not to ruin the program by getting run over by a bus.