This is a thread for ILXORS IN THEIR 50's

PEmter Buck

REmckoning

Fables of the REmconstruction

Emonster

Out of TiEm

Etc.

It's the Emd of the world as we know it

Okay I will stop now

A while ago, I realized that when my ears ring, they ring in the key of E. Which is mildly disappointing, because it is such a stereotypical rock guitar key.

Would harmonise well with Glenn Branca guitar symphonies however, which I think are all or mostly in that key.

well i never.
for my recent 56th birthday i got a kit from the NHS re bowel cancer checking.
i.e. a poo kit.
had no idea that this was a thing until it turned up.
got the "all clear" letter today, albeit with a lot of legally required caveats.

*Hums riff from Judas Priest's "Breaking the Law"*

SHIT IN A BOX! SHIT IN A BOX!

I didn't get a poo kit.

Everyone aged 60 to 74 years who is registered with a GP and lives in England is automatically sent an NHS bowel cancer screening kit every 2 years.

The programme is expanding so that everyone aged 50 to 59 years will be eligible for screening. This is happening gradually over 4 years and started in April 2021 with 56 year olds.

The programme has also started to include 58 year olds, so you may get a test before you're 60.

weird.
i got the letter a few days after my 56th birthday.
guess it depends on your surgery that you are registered with.

(x-post)

Looks like it's been devised by the same NHS team who decided:

From 1 September 2023, you're eligible for the shingles vaccine when you turn 65....You'll remain eligible until your 80th birthday.

Information:
If you turned 65 before 1 September 2023, you'll be eligible for the shingles vaccine when you turn 70.

oh right 56th birthday - looked like 50th to my 50 year old eyes.

ahh, yeah,
seems to kick in once you get beyond the mid-50s groove.

I'm in Scotland and I got my first poo test in today - less than a week after my 50th birthday.
I find this mildly amusing given I had to have surgery for bowel cancer towards the end of last year.

I feel like poo-kits-in-the-mail is one of those things Fox News will circulate next time there's a debate about universal health care. "In SOCIALIST countries, you have to POOP in a BOX and MAIL it to the GOVERNMENT!!!"

You don't even get pictures of the inside of your colon! Total ripoff. It's like the Willy Wonka experience all over again.

Different chocolate factory.

lol

lol nickn, kudos

I owe it all to tipsy.

New varifocals, had them 24 hours, hello headache.

I was worrying about the state of the planet's ecosystem, as you do, and then I thought "well I won't be around to see the worst of it". And then I thought "Right - I'll be dead in no more than a few decades and will never live to see The Future."

Which isn't in any way profound but it was the first time it had hit me in such an irrefutable manner. Hello middle age fartdom! You kids today etc

I was worrying about the state of the planet's ecosystem, as you do, and then I thought "well I won't be around to see the worst of it". And then I thought "Right - I'll be dead in no more than a few decades and will never live to see The Future."

I had a similar thought right around the time I turned 50, that I am not "middle-aged" but am in fact in the final third of my life. And I'm good with that, I guess. My biggest thought re death is that I wish it would be possible for my wife and me to both die at the exact same moment, because I don't want to be without her and I don't want to leave her alone.

Widows seem to do better than widowers, if that is any consolation.

I just had a thought about where I was a decade ago, after I split up with my ex and moved out.. and I thought how stunningly brief a decade really is. I remember doing laundry after I moved out, and the article I was reading in the laundromat, like it was yesterday. A decade is a blink of an eye, and I'm not sure how many I have left lol

i think i'm finally starting to make my peace with things and people leaving this world. even being okay with people forgetting the things and people that have passed. it used to freak me out that you could be here and then be gone and eveything went on as if nothing had happened. that you could still laugh and joke and eat sandwiches after someone you loved had died. i was talking to my kid who is into fashion and i brought up virgil abloh and i thought damn he was everywhere and blowing up and all that and i can't even remember the last time i heard or saw his name. he's just gone. but its cool. everything goes. people go on. animals crap in the woods and trees fall on them. its all okay. i don't mind the idea of being forgotten anymore.

Widows seem to do better than widowers, if that is any consolation.

thats not consolation for some of us.

sorry Halfway, i am feeling a little fragile at the moment, so that comment hit hard.

"Things are as they are, and end as they must." Heraclitus, I think?

But yeah deaths have been accelerating in my world... mostly parents and pets and niche celebrities, but it's just the start. I know it is coming for me too but I do not feel done.

*hugs* to you mark.

I had a similar thought right around the time I turned 50, that I am not "middle-aged" but am in fact in the final third of my life.

My science-teacher mom calls it "the terminal third" — a phrase she read somewhere. She started saying that when she was in her 50s, which at least gave me time to get used to the idea. Now I'm in my 50s and she's about to turn 78 and the "terminal" part is undeniably creeping up on her and my dad. My mom was 23 when I was born, so I can look at her and see where I'll be in 23 years — I mean, assuming I'm still alive. And 23 years isn't that long! I remember 2001 pretty clearly.

My science-teacher mom calls it "the terminal third"

Hah! When I turn 50 I told people that realistically speaking, I had crossed over into the Mortality Zone.

My mom was 23 when I was born, so I can look at her and see where I'll be in 23 years — I mean, assuming I'm still alive.

Same here. My mom turned 75 in February. She travels a lot these days. She was in Mexico for her birthday (my wife and I joke that she goes down there to see her secret other family) and is going to Europe in May.

My parents mostly don't travel at all anymore. Though my dad did fly out to see his sister this year, so that was good. But I wish they did more. Definitely something I would prefer to do at that point in my life, to whatever degree possible. I have friends and family in their 70s and 80s who travel a lot, I think there's a lot of benefit to it, experiencing new things. But I guess that's driven by personal preference.

My mother is 85, and she travels a lot to visit her other children. I'll probably never see her in person ever again, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I don't feel comfortable contacting her for reasons I can't really figure out.

As for feeling comfortable about dying someday, I'm not. One of the last things I think about each night before I fall asleep is wondering if tomorrow will be the day I die. And I don't like it at all.

This will sound corny but I've had a couple of very real-feeling dreams of dying that I think seriously helped with the acceptance. Like, last-minute-of-life type dreams. I wonder if it's at all similar to the effects psilocybin can have for terminally ill people, in terms of looking right at it.

i've got a tombstone hand and a graveyard mind
i'm just fifty-two and I don't mind dying

Townes Van Zandt died at 52. Would have been 80 today.

presumably the sooner i die, the fewer regrets i will have? which suggests that i'm a solid decade overdue

*deletes a lot of honest opinion*

i don’t wanna be around longer than necessary.

sorry Halfway, i am feeling a little fragile at the moment, so that comment hit hard.

― mark e, Thursday, March 7, 2024 7:30 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Oh, it's absolutely hard, from whichever side you take it.

As for feeling comfortable about dying someday, I'm not. One of the last things I think about each night before I fall asleep is wondering if tomorrow will be the day I die. And I don't like it at all.

Yes, I have to agree strongly with you on this. I can't think too much about the end or else it becomes difficult for me to think about anything else at all.

It is an odd realization to have an idea of what the rest of your future looks like, having been alive and alert for the past 40+ years and seeing how that all went.

I don't think I'm ever going to see flying cars or flying scooters. Cancer's not going anywhere before, say, 2050. No one's going to go to Mars and come back before I'm gone.

I'm not disappointed! I'm also getting to the age where I'm not huge on surprises!

At 58, I’m hoping that UFOs become IFOs before I go, along with getting another Paul Buchanan album and/or Prefab Sprout 18cd box set of unreleased projects. What hits nowadays, besides family and friends ailing, is the lost companionship of art from Mark Linkous, Johann Johannsson, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, etc.

I'll be 57 in a week and I think about mortality so differently as a parent -- most acutely because my older son is disabled. his younger brother will be fine and will make his way, but the thought of my eldest having to be without me is very hard for me; we are bonded, he and I, I've come to think of all the the experiences I had prior to parenthood as preparatory work for the hard, wonderful, great, life-defining work of being his Dad. I think about this so much. He'll only be a child a while longer and I expect I'll feel somewhat different after the last vestiges of physical childhood drop off from him -- but his disability means he will in many ways remain the child he is, just in a bigger body. gaming how to soften the eventual blow of his parents' absence from the world in thirty or so years occupies me for shorter or longer periods of contemplation almost daily. although I should also say, my family tends to live for what I used to call "an abominably long time," so I may have forty years left, who knows.

i got cancer a few yrs ago, prostate. often, if they catch it early enough, before it's likely to spread, the specialists do the "wait wait wait wait NOW!" routine. which was weird. and they think they got all of mine, it tests that way. but whenever i think about "how i'll likely go" that's def in there.

asking your oncologist "so what are my odds of metastatic recurrence" is weird. i'm told very low. and i have a relatively recent book with the numbers based on my track to where i am, which agree. so i mostly forget it and test once a year.

thanks for sharing that jclc, that's very moving. i struggle with priorities and that is inspiring, stay well.

And 23 years isn't that long! I remember 2001 pretty clearly.

I feel quite the opposite! If anything, I feel the guy walking around wearing my body and name in 2001 is long dead -- I obviously *know* a lot of things about that guy, what he did, and what he thought, but memory is too strong a word for the kind of awareness I have about those things. And in turn I expect I myself will be long gone before the physical body with my name stops walking around and talking to people and doing stuff. And that's OK!

Hunt3r I am in a similar situation (breast not prostate); I've ditched tamoxifen as secondary prevention because I just can't live the way it made me feel. If I have a recurrence it will be stage 4 and terminal, full stop. In hospice I was was with women who died that way (some in their 20s and 30s). It wasn't pretty. I already feel somewhat responsible for my own cancer because I drank plenty of alcohol, and now I wonder how I'll feel if I get terminal cancer when I could have done some preventative therapy :(

asking your oncologist "so what are my odds of metastatic recurrence" is weird.

Asked my oncologist What were the odds that I was going to get colon cancer again.

He replied, I can tell you with some certainty that you won't be getting this cancer again.

And then we just did this for a few more minutes:

https://i.imgur.com/oIYib5k.gif

any y'all ever just pooped in a box and thrown it into the post?

weird times we live in.

yes I have!

I hope that 3 years from now I will be able to do that instead of the whole procedure