Aging

[MisterVeritis]

A number of our still youthful male members love to denigrate we older men for our alleged erectile dysfunction. I don't know if it is true for everyone. But it did start me thinking about aging in general. What are the things that go wrong?

For me, it is the pains. In my 50s I had lower back pain. My spine started to disintegrate. It is unclear why. Surgery corrected my problem for a time. My surgeon told me I should expect to lose height and more importantly the cartilage between disks one at a time roughly every five years. This had far more impact on sex than anything else.

At age 65 I have a small amount of pain, routinely, in my left hand, wrist, forearm, elbow, bicep and both the front and back of my shoulder. I went to physical therapy for a month. It helped. A little. On a scale of 1-10 I usually experience pain at the low-end 1-3.

All of my problems appear to involve the left side of my body.

Essential tremors do not appear to be age-related exactly. My first tremors were obvious while I was still on active duty at age 38. At age 65 they impact most of the things I do.

I have sleep problems most nights. I go to sleep easily. Then awake around 3 AM. I usually remain awake until some time between 5 and 6 AM. Then I go to sleep until 9 AM. When I was younger I would fall to sleep as soon as I was ready to. In the morning I could not wait to get out of bed. Most days that was around 5 AM.

I have a pinching pain in my left chest and back. Sometimes it lingers for up to a week. Then it goes away.

Aging is interesting. I know more about everything than I did when I was younger. I still read as much as ever. Most years I read between 40 and 50 large books (between 300 and 500 pages) every year. Most years I read the first few chapters of as many as 100 books. Some are junk. Some I am not quite ready to read.

The effects of aging are uneven. Some of my jokes are better. Some are worse. About a week ago I entered the kitchen. My wife of roughly 40 years was there. I looked at her and said, "I am so glad I got these memory foam inserts for my shoes. Now I don't forget why I come into the kitchen."

Her laugh was real.