I have worn glasses for near-sightedness since fourth grade. For a while I wore contacts but I’ve been wearing glasses only for around 15 years. I think I look better with them than without.
I never needed reading glasses though. I still read pretty well, but apparently 18 point Aida fabric is a bridge too far.
I suspect I have bifocals in my future. I already hate having to take my glasses off to read. Now I’m going to have to switch back and forth constantly.
Some time ago I was listening to Penn Jillette on his podcast. He was talking about interviewing an Olympic athlete, some sort of runner (the specifics are foggy).
Anyway, Jillette said that what impressed him most was when the athlete rose to his feet from his sitting position on a chair. Paraphrasing here, but he said something like “yeah, he just stood right up, without even thinking about it, and that was that. He simply stood up!”
mmm
Huh. I’m an overweight old lady, and i get up from a chair with no thought.
Many of my classmates are now great-grandparents. Get togethers at reunions are tedious - for me - as I had a one-and-done late in life, and now have just one grand-cat.
One of the bad things about getting old is that one day you learn that lumbar disc herniations occur in the back, most often between the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebral bodies. A knowledge I could have done without.
I became aware at 40 that my eyesight wasn’t as sharp as it used to be, but it was still OK so that I didn’t need any corrective eyewear. I could tell it was getting less sharp over the years, but in my case, it was really slow. Really, really slow. So slow that I got my first pair of readers at 59. I probably should have picked them up a year or three earlier, but that was the tipping point when I decided that I wanted my monitor to be a little sharper.
What I’ve noticed when my vision is getting worse and then I get new eye glasses is that trees go from solid masses of green to a collection of individual leaves.
When I was a child I was told that, unlike everyone else in my family, I didn’t need glasses, but I would when I hit 40. Bam, I hit 40 and needed glasses. Since my work involved constantly going between paper on my desk and a computer screen, I went straight to bifocals so I wouldn’t have to keep taking them off and putting them back on.
Now I’m in my 60s and I’ve got a cataract developing in one eye. I’m looking forward to when it “ripens” enough to operate on. My wife had both eyes done several years ago and enjoys the results. I just need to remember that I’ve got essentially no peripheral vision on one side for now.
There is a “fitness test” that is all the rage. The challenge is to stand up from a cross-legged position without using your hands or knees. It is supposed to be a predictor of longevity.
I can’t do it, but if I hold a 25 lb weight at arms length I can. There’s a lot of balance involved, beyond just the strength required.
Agree that one is mostly balance. But declining balance is a problem that many seniors face even if their strength is still adequate to their daily needs.
And deficient balance is a common route to falls. What would have been a stubbed toe or stumble at age 40 is a full-blown faceplant at 65.
So yeah, there is a direct causal relationship between weak balance and reduced longevity.
I remember another such test a couple of years ago that involved standing on one leg. If you could do so for thirty seconds, it was a good sign.
My father in his mid-80’s now is starting to make me sweat. My folks are in the midst of replacing their old, stained carpet and I was over helping them pick colors and vet the quality of their samples. He at times forgets himself and starts to move like he thinks he’s in his mid-50’s if not younger. He’ll get agitated to do something, stand up suddenly from the couch and immediately stumble and catch himself. At 6’3" he’s got a long way to tumble. He’s already had one bad fall where lost a fingertip and got some stitches in his scalp (thankfully he sacrificed the fingertip to save his skull).
He knows better intellectually, but just can’t seem to reign in his random impulses to try and move too quickly.
ETA: Meanwhile my own stubby legs + expanded waistline + age means I’m finding stepping down drops in trails an increasing challenge in balance. Past a certain point getting older bites 
.
I think you’re operating on obsolete advice on needing to wait for ripening. I advise not to wait, but talk to an ophthalmologist right now. I waited too long to get mine done and discovered they were too hard. I ended up needing a more expensive version of the surgery that my insurance did not pay the extra cost for.
No peripheral vision on one side sounds like an accident waiting to happen. If you drive, cars can sneak up. If you’re a pedestrian, cars can sneak up. That sounds bad.
I’ve been on the slow-motion moving sidewalk to cataract surgery for awhile now, as in a couple years of regular checkups to monitor the deterioration. Yeah, the advice is shifting / shifted to not wait as long as possible. When it harms your quality of life, fix it. Having hunks missing from my visual field would count as harmful to me. YMMV of course.
So far my issue is only that progressive contacts no longer work well enough, so I’m back to progressive specs. But once that’s not able to get me back to 20/20 near & far, it’s time to rotoroot those nasties outta my eyes.
I’m going to turn 59 next week. Slight bit of pain from my right hip, especially when I wake up in the morning. Hopefully that doesn’t mean I need a hip replacement in the near future. Maybe arthritis?
Other than that, everything seems to be O.K. But my urine stream is poor, and I have to pee frequently. Wondering about prostrate. I haven’t been to a doctor in 20 years. Maybe I should see one.
I tried doing this while brushing my teeth and seriously messed up my feet for a long time. Something about the downward pressure caused my feet to spasm unexpectedly hours later and the pain was easily a 9/10 fortunately it only lasted a minute or so. But my God. The pain was beyond pain.
I quit doing that.
Yes you should. There are cheap meds that can flat solve your small bladder problem if it’s just the age-typical slowly swelling prostate. They worked magic for me.
And if it’s something less happy squeezing on your bladder, well the happiest time to address it is today. Yesterday would have been better, and tomorrow will be worse.
There is zero upside to delaying dealing with this. For your day to day quality of life and perhaps for your very life.
Never forget: your warrantee runs out when you turn 50. It’s not gonna stay trouble free too much longer after that. Taking a proactive approach to body maintenance is part and parcel of getting old. Unless one prefers the alternative.
This is on the advice from the ophthalmologist, one I trust. He took a look earlier this year and said, “come back in a year.”
And I’m well aware of those dangers, so I’m being ultra careful. (I try to be a careful driver to begin with.) If things deteriorate to the point of real danger, I’ll see the ophthalmologist earlier than the appointment I already have scheduled early next year.
Echo that you should see one right away. I always have, but I went back when I got rejected for blood donation due to a racy pulse. Turned out I had AFib. That was about 20 years ago - younger than you - and I’m probably alive today thanks to catching it. I had zero symptoms. I had zero symptoms of prostate cancer also, except the PSA test.
The last time i was checked, they said i should wait because my vision is still good enough that i shouldn’t risk surgery i don’t need. But you definitely don’t need to wait for cataracts to “ripen” these days. A friend with nothing wrong with his lens except terrible vision got a lens replacement, just for the bad vision. And it helped him a huge amount. (It wasn’t a cataract, just something badly shaped inside his eye. Either the lens, or maybe the eyeball is shaped weird and a different lens helps adjust for that.