We should all learn to share the experience with others.
OK, I need to preface this article by saying that, in today’s world, I am not old. I am constantly being told that 60 is the new 40 and that ‘old’ now starts in your mid-70s. Yet, even with that optimistic outlook, since turning 60, I have noticed a few things about ageing that no one ever tells you about.
In fact, I was discussing this with my doctor after a month of various tests for ailments that appeared out of nowhere and, after ruling out anything sinister, his diagnosis was “you are just getting old”. Various analogies of beat-up classic cars and vintage jukeboxes pursued, but the bottom line was that as you age your body stops working as well.
I shouldn’t be surprised by this revelation and, indeed with a few lifestyle and diet changes, the old body soon returned to working, roughly, as it should, but it did get me thinking about how little we share with each other details of the catalogue of age-related disorders that start revealing themselves as the decades pass.
“My sister, three years my elder, laughed and told me that I would never get up from a chair again without groaning”
I remember when I turned 50, I asked various people what’s different once that landmark is reached. My sister, three years my elder, laughed and told me that I would never get up from a chair again without groaning and one of my work colleagues, who was 15 years my senior, told me that my very existence would pivot upon never being too far away from a bottle of Gaviscon (antacid) tablets. Both were uncannily right.
But the point of this article is that I had to coerce this information from them; it’s as if there’s an unspoken alliance of everyone over 50 never to speak of the ills that accumulate as you age. Why aren’t we more open about talking about these things?
