Regarding the OPs experience, I’m actually a little concerned that my young-ish doctor is not very experienced with older patients. In regards to what to really keep an eye on and what to look for, based on having seen it in other patients, and not just the standard numbers charts.
I know that this is a good and needed question, but it always makes me chuckle. I have a foot of height and 100 lbs. on my wife. We are both very docile and polite. In 26 years, sure we have disagreed about a couple of things, we both just figure out what is important to the other. We have never had an argument.
When my mom was still alive, I took her to her doctors. I always had paper and pen ready. It scared the doc to be sure. I generally kept my mouth shut and let my mom do the talking. I was taking notes to review with my mom later.
When the doc started talking to me, I would point at my mom and say “she’s right there, talk to her”
Not supposed to do it in dog years. 
Heh, I have a t-shirt that says, “In dog beers I’ve only had one”.
Love it. We are cut from the same cloth. Burlap is cloth, right?
I’ve got blisters on my fingers!
I’m some years older than the OP, I suspect, and I don’t get those kinds of questions (except for the feeling safe one) from my doctor, nor does my husband who is even older (I sit in on his appointments for language reasons; English is his second language, and he pretends to understand everything to avoid embarrassment). I mean, we have hand holds and bannisters, we are physically active and able to take care of ourselves, but we haven’t been asked about it. I have expressed concern about my increasing tendency to forget the appropriate word, always a fairly specific noun, like potassium, and basically gotten nothing but platitudes in return. Perhaps when he retires, probably next year, I should start going to a geriatrician.
The stairs to my home office are very steep. I installed another handrail.
Installed another handrail for the house steps before I had my hip replaced. I have an eye turned towards our bedroom bathroom.
And I never go anywhere with out my phone. I saw what happened to my mom when she fell and could not get up. She had a panic button but nothing I could say would get her to wear it. “It’s too heavy”. It may have weighed two tenths of an ounce.
My late father called it an ‘organ recital’.
This is known as an ‘organ recital’.
whoops, ninja’ed
My Medicare starts in 3 days. I guess that’s “Official” enough. As in:
Here, here’s your Government-issued Fogey’s card. Hurry up and die, preferably of something cheap; our budget limitations require it.
Heh. I got some of this in my last hospital stay. I’m about 50 years old, probably look older with a body wrecked by anemia, & had a bout of pneumonia that I’m told made me actually psychotic for a few days.
Do I know where I am? Yes, why wouldn’t I?
OK, yes, I was confused in the ICU, but I don’t remember most of that.
I wish. Just having fun; glad someone noticed.
I too had fun at the “List of Animals” exercise. I asked if that could include extinct or fantasy animals, and started rattling off all kinds of fun and fabulous fauna. Not a single Cat or Dog in the mix.
.
At our Olde Fartes Poker game today, I realized we’d moved past ailments to talking about friends who’ve died this month.
I’ll be getting those questions soon during the annual physical.
Just chiming in for an amusing and only sorta related anecdote. 
Hiking last year on the Wonderland Trail, I had an accident that ended up requiring 8 staples in my forehead and scalp. After I got over the initial shock of rolling backwards over a rock, finding my glasses, wiping of the blood, taking a selfie to assess the damage. I figured I could do the hike up an hour and out an hour, and didn’t need to hit the SOS on the satellite device. About 15 minutes up the trail I ran into 3 ladies out hiking, who were health care professionals.
For the 10-15 minutes they were sorting out my bandages and stuff, they must have asked my name 3 times. “I’m sorry, I forgot your name” and serepticiously asking questions to assess a concussion while we were chatting away. I found it really amusing and third time on the name asked “are you making sure I don’t have alzheimers or a concussion?”
We had a new bathroom done last year - it included a huge walk-in shower,
If we were young - ’ Oooh, I thinks there’s room for 2 people in there!'.
Now we are old - ‘Well, it will be easy to fit a chair in there’.
Fortunately, we’re still at the “there’s room for two people” stage. We haven’t yet put a chair in there.
What? It’s good to have someone to wash your back. And I still like the view.
Oh, God, we had an entire discussion with the contractor about whether it would be feasible to build a bench into the shower or whether it would make more sense to just buy a separate bench. In all fairness, that’s disablity along with age, since Mr. Legend can’t stand long enough for a decent shower and his balance is not the greatest. However, we DO shower together, in the sense that he’s more comfortable if I stay nearby while he showers in case he falls!
I just got told today after they stuck an echocardiogram monitor down my throat that my heart is not falling apart any more than what is age appropriate. Which was a positive, no heart surgery in my future.
You know you get a free Medicare physical every year, don’t you? And things do break. Like with cars, finding things early is cheaper.
Maybe I’m the exception, but I’ve never gone for an exam and had something diagnosed that I was not aware of. When my big toe was causing excruciating pain, I googled “big toe excruciating pain” and read about gout. I made an appointment to confirm.
As far as the car analogy goes, sometimes it’s not worth putting a lot of work into a car that’s very old.
A free physical is something that I should take advantage of though. I currently don’t have a doctor so finding one who isn’t horrible (like the guy I went to for 20 years until he retired) is the first step.