Poll: what's the worst part of getting old?

boring answer but stiff, aching joints. i walk like i'm 90 yrs old for the first 10 minutes of the day

cosign

Walked 12,000 steps for three days in a row in Boston last week in either Red Wing boots or Chuck Taylors

while one "should" be walking 7000 steps a day or more, doing it barefoot is much more healthy than doing it in Converse. (idk what Red Wing boots are like)

People need to lay off on Converse sneakers on these boards! Perfectly good shoes until oh wait what thread is this

Anyway the correct answer to this thread is outliving your loved ones. The rest is narcissism

I find it exhausting feeling panicked over every little thing I notice health-wise. I think I've diagnosed myself with some calamitous malady about 30 times the past year. Typical: this morning I noticed some redness on my left foot. No big deal, but when it was still there when I got back from a movie a few hours later, the first thing I thought of was diabetes, and that I was headed for amputation. (Not having any idea what a diabetic foot actually looks like, but remembering that many years ago a doctor told me I was at risk for diabetes.) Two after hours that, the redness was of course gone. This panic is routine for me, and knowing how irrational it is doesn't help.

― clemenza, Thursday, January 23, 2020 10:51 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

this has been my entire year so far; the age component is primarily that a) you no longer get to reassure yourself with "it's probably nothing; this isn't generally a concern for people yet at your age," and b) your parents are growing older too, so it might happen that they experience the same symptoms and then for them it turns out to be congestive heart failure (not the advanced kind, thank god)

Yes! I keep getting mystery ailments that last just long enough to convince me that I'm really dying this time before they disappear just as mysteriously. I spend way too much time convinced that I definitely have a deadly disease.

We’ve had about three (very minor and false) cancer scares in the last year. But cancer is v close to us.

I've been taking out of date Co-dydramols to deal with pain from a nasty fall outside last week. The kind of minor accident I'd have forgotten about in days in my 20's/30's but now the pain lingers on for a week. That sense that even seemingly minor accidents can be life-changing events in an ageing fucked up body is what I'm feeling today. And still every time I need to sneeze I have to brace myself for a sharp pain down the side of my torso.

while one "should" be walking 7000 steps a day or more, doing it barefoot is much more healthy than doing it in Converse. (idk what Red Wing boots are like)

― don't care didn't ask still clappin (sic)

Barefoot only if you're walking on sand or grass. Concrete not so much.

I'm at the age now where my among my friends everyone who is going to get married probably has, everyone who wants kids does or has moved on, and the first round "we made a mistake" divorces have happened. Friend's kids graduating / marrying / having kids is still to come, along with some number of "we've grown apart and the kids are grown" divorces.

But right now seems to be the "friends get cancer and die" stage and it fucking sucks. A former colleague's husband died in December, a very close friend's wife died last night, and former colleague of my wife is starting hospice this week. I kind of knew this was inevitable but the randomness of fate and mortality is just sad and awful.

When I celebrated my 50th birthday I told people that, realistically speaking, I was now in 'the death zone', where age-related mortality rates begin to rise. It seemed important to acknowledge that. It still does, now that I am mid-60s.

50 years ago today pic.twitter.com/FrRIjUXQrF

— Geezer Butler (@geezerbutler) February 13, 2020

"Geezer" indeed

Forever young in the UK tho.

think i'm about to receive my first invitation to a friend's child's wedding

Christgau's newest post--"The 77 Year Old Rock Critic meets his 77-year-old body"--is quite sobering.

Forgot that he gives the okay for sharing; if you don't subscribe and want to read it, it's here.

http://robertchristgau.substack.com/p/my-thigh-hurts?r=1jtu0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=copy

Okay, finally, a couple years into this bogus 'forties' bullshit and the joint pain has finally begun in earnest. I can tell a nor'easter is on its way jist by listenin' to m'knees, a-yep. Yessir. (returns to whittling while rocking on the front porch of the general store)

Picked this off my shelf out of the blue the other day; highly recommend it to anyone over, I don't know, 50 or so.

http://phildellio.tripod.com/cowley.jpg

Starting a physically demanding job this summer has really shown me the limitations of this aging flesh-suit. My wrists and feet are mad as hell at me.

Much empathy for that, WmC - oldness + fatness means compression socks every damn day and icing as much as possible to keep foot pain from being completely crippling.

I may have to look into compression socks, thanks Jaq -- in the meantime, since my previous post I tried Aspercreme on my wrists and it worked surprisingly fast!

I've been juggling a whole bunch of medicines the past few weeks as tests have been eliminating things (on top of all the pills I was already taking for chronic conditions).
I got this vision of an older me fumbling with those confusing wee pill sorters are supposed to help and realised it's probably not that far away.

Which is better, partial or bridge?

waking up at night to pee

― cum dude (Princess TamTam), Tuesday, May 10, 2011 10:48 AM

My biggest complaint atm. Last night was the first night in months that I made it through without having to get up.

― Miami weisse (WmC), Saturday, January 18, 2020 10:12 AM

Starting generic Flomax plus diphenhydramine (Zzzquil) has been great for my nights. I still have to get up to pee but don't have to struggle to squeeze any out, and I can fall back asleep afterward.

^ a report from the front lines

Am sixty next year...

Option Votes
Reduced energy levels No.
Deteriorating hearing No.
Memory problems Yeah.
Metabolism slowdown No (not sure what this means)
Bowel/elimination problems (including hemorrhoids) No (I think I know what this means)
Longer times to recover from injury or exercise No.
Deteriorating vision Yeah.
Growing hair where you don't want to grow it Abit.
Papery skin/loss of elasticity in skin/wrinkles No, no, some.
Dental problems No.
Fear of falling/fear of injury/loss of physical courage No.
Reduced libido No.
Graying hair A bit.
Slower reflexes Don't think so.
Thickening/yellowing of nails one or two toenails
Eating/Digestion problems No.
Moles hmm, a couple.
Melanin deposits/age spots Dunno, possibly.
Losing hair where you don't want to lose it Nope, all there

Where are back and joint pain in this list?

A fatal omission, must repoll.

I have this thing lately where I feel a faint sense of panic when confronted with technology (I'm going to go all Baudelaire: like feeling the wind of the wing of madness). I'm pretty computer literate and am happy to jump in with most tech but last night I had to change the clock on the boiler (oh, the glamour) and it all seemed horribly complicated - to the point where I was just staring at it, and getting that 'thunk' sound Windows makes when you're asking it to do something it doesn't want to. I'm hoping it was mostly tiredness, but ffs.

I'm 35, and my wife & kids recently took a trip to see her parents, which I didn't have the vacation for (not having your kids in school eats up a lot of it!). So I'm home alone, and I just realized something about getting older...you don't really know what's up anymore. Like in my early 20's I always knew where the party was, who's at the bar, who's got a poker game going, who's staying in getting high, etc. A lot of those people are still around but either they don't do much anymore or I just don't know about it. Obviously Covid is a big factor right now but even if there wasn't a pandemic, I wouldn't really know what to do with myself. Or what even I *want* to do with myself!

I'm 59, and this may not happen for another 20 years, but I know that my first hip replacement is going to be my right hip.

Hipeous Lump

I was pretty sick for a few months years ago, when I was around frog's age. After recovering, I realized that I didn't know what was going on around town anymore either. Hell, I had also lost touch with the whole world, in fact. (I recently read on wikipedia that The Police reunited about 10-15 years ago? Had no idea.)

But looking back, I'm not sure if the cause of that was getting sick or if it had more to do with ... getting older.

Alas, the two are not unrelated

1:00 this afternoon: "I should go spend some time on the bike before the gym closes at 3:00." 2:00: "I don't really feel like it."

3:00: "Okay--I'll drive into London, have dinner there, and go to that rep screening of Nightmare on Elm Street." Four hours later: "Forget it--I'll just make dinner here and watch something at home."

8:30: "I should at least go have a coffee at Tim Hortons and do some reading." 9:00: "It's kind of cold outside."

When you see the moans you posted in this thread 10 years ago and think "lol that kid knew nothing"

They were dressing up in costume at work yesterday. The Clueless girls as well as Forrest Gump were represented. So I ask Dionne Davenport, What's up with you millennials dressing up like 30-year old movies? She says they didn't seem 30 years old when they were running nightly on TBS while they were growing up.

I say, TBS? I saw Forrest Gump in the theater! And the look in her eyes when I said that, like I had just unwrapped myself to reveal myself as the Mummy. Good thing I didn't mention how amazing I thought the CGI was at the time.

my dewey youthfulness is due, in part, to never having seen forrest gump

I was forced to watch it five years ago as a DYING MAN’S LAST(ish) WISH and I am still pissed about it

On the bright side, he's dead now ...

Most millennials are in their 30s so yeah 30yo films are what we grew up with

I don't remember ever dressing up as Godfather or Deliverance characters.

lol

Let's not go too far down the path of what the preceding generations dressed up as for Halloween.

cut my tongue on the mouth hole

It's Friday night, and you find yourself watching an episode of Celebrity Bowling from the '70s with John Beradino, Greg Morris, and Frank Gorshin and his wife.

now on day five of my covid experience and the whole thing would be significantly more tolerable if every single cough and sneeze didn't wrench the fuck out of my lower back

Oof