This is the inevitable thread for ILxors in their forties

Eg zing fucking touch

I have an eye test booked in for mid November and I find myself holding small text at odd distances away from me compared to just over two years ago. My prescription hasn't changed in over ten years but I think it'll change this time. Can't tell if I'm getting more or less short-sigthed though.

I have a buddy whose eye doctor finally told him to get reading glasses last year, and when my friend pushed back, the eye doctor said, don't complain, you're almost 50, you've had a good run.

aged 42 I now have my first pair of glasses, cannot read anything closer than about a foot away, and the distance is getting bigger all the time.

I'm 48 and no sign of the apparently nearly inevitable presbyopia yet but thanks to that link I read a few weeks ago I now know what to expect and how best to deal with it.

I also can't focus on small text like I used to, and if I get up too fast, I get dizzy.

I've needed reading glasses since my 30's and never really got used to not being able to read small text. Like I still do a futile attempt at reading it before getting the reading glasses out every time just to feel infuriated!

it could always be worse. Towards the end Monet was still doing his work half blind and his retina so gone it was only able to take in 3 colours, or summat like that.

Fuck glasses

I've totally adjusted to my varifocals and now wear them all the time (I'm 46). My eyesight is still decent (according to the optician) but has deteriorated enough that the compensatory work my brain has to do to fill the gap is causing eyestrain (and gnarly headaches). So it goes.

The only time my glasses are rubbish is in twilight when I'm better off without.

I don't think I have that presby thing going on yet (47 in 2 weeks), but I do notice that my field of vision has gotten narrower in the past few years ... like text gets blurrier at angles more and more acute over the past year or so. I might have to get one of those stupid clippy paper holder things to put next to the computer.

Also, point of pride, I have not lost or damaged the driving glasses I had to get 3 years ago! I have totally gotten used to putting them on every time I drive somewhere. They make me look like an indie librarian, and I am okay with that look.

My eyesight got quickly and progressively worse through my teens (to the point that I'm effectively blind without corrective lenses), but they've barely changed at all since then (44 now). Just got 'em checked a couple weeks back and my prescription is still the same it's been for years and years. I guess that's lucky. I'll take it. Just takes me a bit longer to refocus when shifting from, say, reading to looking at something across the room.

The last time I was at the eye doctor I complained about difficulty with tiny text, with the phone number on the back of my credit card as a prime example.

The eye doctor explained that I’d just need to slide my glasses down on my nose a bit.

“Oh, like older people do?” I asked.

We both had a moment - he’s about the same age I am and also wears glasses - then shared a rueful laugh.

I’m 44

bit longer to refocus

I particularly notice this when I'm switching between text on two monitors that are at different distances. It's like waiting for a 90s camcorder to autofocus.

I am nearsighted and have been wearing glasses since the third grade, but I only need them to see things at a distance (like, to read the spines of books on a shelf across the room). I take them off to read or to work on my computer; always have. At this point (gonna be 50 in December, plus diabetic) feeling kinda lucky my eyes aren't worse.

As someone who has worn glasses since second grade and has a very heavy perscription, I am glad that I am currently holding steady.

However, three acquaintances have experienced retinals detachments in the past year. This is freaking me out.

One is younger and got hit with a champagne cork. Tough, but he'll be ok.

One has had diabetes since childhood (a risk factor) but a medicine mixup appears to have permenently damaged one eye.

One is a photographer w no risks and it happened with no warning, and left her with damaged eyesight.

For me, I have a huge risk of this happening.

man everything is falling apart lately: feet, hearing, vision, stomach, breathing, neck, shoulder
surgery in a week or two for the last means it will come to the top of the pile for at least the entirety of november. second time's the charm.

Digital displays aside, it is real pleasure to focus on text on a crisply printed page

I either have a bunion or something more sinister on left foot. Both joint of big toe and bottom of foot are inflamed and swelling is immense.

Bleh.

Still feeling relatively physically okay - not much different to ten years ago, other than maybe a bit of hip pain after running. That said, the world seems to have changed a lot since lockdown and it's a strange thing, this temporal distortion. I now often feel like the oldest person in the room when I go out to pubs or gigs - one of the old heads (unless it's like Saint Etienne the other day in which case I was one of the youngest). I'm single again after a two-and-a-half year relationship, so out of boredom thought I'd check out and see what the craic was on Tinder. I was struck by how much older everyone roughly my age suddenly seemed to be compared to when I last used it. I deleted the app after a day. Is there a word for this, like "sonder"? This sudden realisation that "yes, there's no denying you're a different person to who you once were and no going back"

Some minor foot issues cropping up for me too. I walk a lot and have mysterious pains now and then. Also my wife gave me a wart that won’t go away

I too am amazed sometimes by how old people my age are.

I think it's a common well documented thing, especially for people over pension age, to see other people in public and think of them as "old codgers" and to realise they're in the same age bracket

Wife teasing John Lennon last night, and I was all "LISTEN, the man was killed 21 years ago tonight. Show some respect."

She looked at me for a few beats, and then asked, "Twenty-one years ago?"

Seems like only 21 years!

Hate to say it Neanderthal but that sounds goutish

That's what all my friends said too. Doc time!

Lol pplains

One of the fun things I learned over the pandemic is that there is a type of inherited arthritis that is definitely not gout, but presents with classic gout symptoms and is not necessarily caused by dietary issues that we traditionally associate with gout. That was a fun thing to learn!

Sinister, you say?

I too am amazed sometimes by how old people my age are.

When my kid got his vaccine shot there was a guy in front of us picking up a prescription and gave his birth date - which was in 1974, same year I was born. But he looked ancient, like serious old-man old. I thought maybe I was just ignoring my own self but on the way out of the store my wife was like 'holy shit that guy was your age but looked 75'

Also i had a couple of gout outbreaks 15 years ago and have been taking a prescription ever since and I never even think about it. The drug costs like $2 a month because it's been around since the 1960s and has zero side effects for me.

i'm at an ortho right now, just got x-rayed, seeing what's what. can barely walk on my foot rn.

mom has a broken toe as well. the Neanderthals are near extinction.

we'll never escape the wooly mammoth now

joygoat - what is your prescription, if I might ask?

It's gout.

The good news is there are plenty of options to explore, good luck.

Ya giving me Prednisone atm for da swelling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mjNY53ORuA

i take allopurinol

Wife teasing John Lennon last night, and I was all "LISTEN, the man was killed 21 years ago tonight. Show some respect."

She looked at me for a few beats, and then asked, _"Twenty-one_ years ago?"

Seems like only 21 years!

John Lennon's death is now old enough for this thread!

Old enough to know better.

i take allopurinol

Was my guess, just curious. Works great for many people I've heard. Kinda frustrated because my doc has been hesitant to prescribe that because I don't have "true gout" apparently. I have a prescription for when I have a flare, but haven't had one in more than two years to worry about.

I fell on some ice a few days ago. My wrist hurt a little in the immediate aftermath, but the next day I woke up feeling like I'd been savagely beaten

death to false gout

the prednisone has helped a ton but my stomach doesn't like it. i'm still walking with an awkward limp but a little more swelling reduction and that's fixed

lol

I know all the jokes about gout and what is historically represents, but holy shit that joint inflammation is some of the most intense pain I've felt in my life. The first time it ever hit me, before I was able to see a doctor and get anything prescribed, was in a knee about six years ago and every step was excruciating.

once it got to lifting my foot and putting a shoe on hurting like fuck yesterday is when i decided to go to the doc.

I learned at least 20 of my friends have gout, when I described my symptoms on FB. they all swore by cherry juice.

gonna try it.

i haven't had much in the way of meat or alcohol in two days.

Heard that about cherries and cherry juice, but that didn't work for me (assuming since it's the false gout or whatever).

What was most frustrating for me is that it had virtually nothing to do with my diet. I'd talk to people with gout and they all described how they could almost always feel it coming on and knew the food triggers for it, but I didn't have that experience at all. Like my last flare from a couple years ago came right in the middle of one of my healthiest food streaks in a long time where I was completely off red meat and wasn't drinking alcohol at all. But in more recent pandemic years when I've been, uh, less good about my diet, absolutely no issues. It's weird.

I don't know how I DON'T have gout tbh. Seriously.