Keeping moving is the key to wellness, says superannuitant with no plan to retire!

First published in stuff.co.nz

“Sixty-five is way too young to retire”, according to Lyn Perry who’s on her feet for an eight-hour shift three times a week at age 72. She tells Joanna Davis about the importance of keeping moving.

At 72, Lyn Perry has an exercise schedule that includes yoga, aquacise, working out at the gym, and walking a 4km circuit around Mount Maunganui several times a week. But to get her steps up to her goal of 10,500 a day, she finds it helps to also do a few eight-hour nursing shifts a week.

Those shifts, on her feet as the overseeing registered nurse at Somervale Retirement Village - just down the road from her own retirement village home of Bayswater - contribute at least 8000 steps each, Perry says. And far from being a burden, she says they help her stay well into older age.

“Being on your feet all shift is something that I’ve done all my life and at my age now, I think it’s a good thing. That’s the major thing that has helped me to keep going: I know how important it is to keep moving.”

Perry and her partner moved to Bayswater Retirement Village in Mount Maunganui, Tauranga, three years ago this month. Originally a “Hutt Valley girl”, she used to holiday at the Mount, and is loving living there full-time.

But it turned out that, despite living happily in a retirement village, retirement itself wasn’t for her. She tried it for a few months, but found she wasn’t ready to give up her 53-year nursing career.

It wasn’t that she didn’t have plenty to do, with a ready social life and plenty of activities laid on.

“I don’t like to say I get bored, but I probably get bored,” she says. “I’m used to working all my life and I found it really difficult. There’s only so much exercise you can do, and house cleaning, especially in a brand-new apartment.

“I just wasn’t ready to stop working,” Perry says. “I like my exercise, but I just felt like I need a job.”

She had finished her career working in plastic surgery, but because there’s no specialist unit in Tauranga, she turned to Seek and Trade Me to start her job hunt. One came up “just five minutes down the road” at Somervale Retirement Village’s care home. With her practicing certificate still valid - and her decades of experience - she was successful.

She now works up to three days a week on a casual basis, working with another RN (registered nurse) and 8 to 10 caregivers each shift to look after up to 70 residents.

She says the work is good, and busy. “It’s a bit different than a hospital ward. You’ve got your routine of medicine rounds, two major rounds, and in between times we do the wound care, dressings. And we’re always on standby if [anything happens], for example if anyone falls. We follow a protocol.“

Perry originally trained as a community nurse, doing an 18-month course when she was just 16, in the days of hospital-based training “with caps and capes and the white stockings”.

“Throughout my marriage, I used to work at night and have my children [in the day]. In 2009, I was on my own and I thought: ‘What am I going to do with my life?’

“I decided my lifelong dream was to be a registered nurse, so I was going to go to university and become a registered nurse. I finished my degree when I was 60.

“I loved the wound care. Laying skin and looking after the burns patients. My favourite was looking after mastectomy and reconstructing breasts. It’s just about one-on-one care.”

In her new work, she still loves building patient relationships: “I love building the rapport with any patients that I have: I love to talk when you’ve got time.”

Seeing wounds heal is also satisfying. “The biggest thrill is when you lay the skin and then every other nurse has to work with it,” she says.

Outside of work and exercise, and taking time out to sit and relax on the deck of her ground floor apartment, Perry also likes to knit.

“I knit for a company in Queenstown that sells cardigans, jacket ones with cow and sheep designs, and kiwi designs on skis.

“I usually take a month to knit one. I do it because I’ve always done knitting. My nana taught me, and I just feel like I need to keep knitting while the TV is going.“

She also catches up with her four children when she can.

She drives down to Wellington every three or four months to see the two who live there. One son, who is in Australia, has recently had a baby. Because she is still working, Perry could easily afford a trip to see her new grandson.

“I managed, with working, to go to see him for the birth of my grandson - and to fly business class.”

According to the Te Ara Ahunga Ora Retirement Commission, New Zealand has one of the highest rates of people aged 65-plus still working -24%, or nearly one in four.

This compares to the UK rate of 10%, Australian rate of 12%, USA 19%, Japan 20% and Iceland 35%.

Among New Zealanders aged 65-69, 44% still have jobs. The commission did not have specific figures for those aged 70-plus.

Retirement Villages Association executive director John Collyns says he’s not surprised by the numbers of superannuitants still working. He says the Retirement Villages Act requires residents to be “predominantly in their retirement, but not exclusively”.

As he says, many people of retirement age are still fit and well.

“And, sadly, many people need the money.” Others just love their work, he says.

It would be fair to say that Perry is in the last group, and is also a person who just can’t sit still. She’s more than happy with her busy lifestyle, and has no plans to retire any time soon.

“I’m going to keep going. I enjoy going, I enjoy meeting people. Health-wise, I’m keeping well... I don’t have any reason to stop working.”