This is the inevitable thread for ILxors in their forties

I lost complete hearing in my left ear six months ago. No biggie

eh?

jk sry

Ha! I’m having surgery in a month. They think one of those tiny lil ear bones lost connection so they’re gonna put a prosthetic in. Should get a lot but not all of it back. It’s seriously disorienting not to have hearing in one ear. I cannot geolocate sounds for the life of me.

this happened to my husband about 10 years ago. never got the hearing back. he can't tell where any sound is coming from, it's pretty bad. plus tinnitus :(

I don’t wear bifocals or glasses of any sort but I do now (in my forties) understand why older people who do will tilt their head down when they look at something across the room and up when reading something in small print

I've got a painful foot/big toe. I've done some reading about gout and spoken to my dad, who suffers periodically, so pretty sure it's not that. I think it's probably a pressure/RSI from all the walking I do? It's manageable but is just another one of those 'it's always there' aches that makes up my body map.

I'm also now the proud owner of a 'bunion sleeve', which sounds like a rejected name for a 'combine two nouns' death metal band.

My left knee inflammation only really cleared up this week. Reaggravated it shortly after it got better when I went ziplining due to the upstairs climb. Can finally bend it again lol.

Now minor left hip twinges showed up but not painful, but enough to where I'm walking a LITTLE different

i bought a cute pair of Vans for fun after mostly wearing semi-orthopedic shoes for the past 5 years . i wore them to the movies, and i maybe walked half a block to and from my car. YET NOW I AM IN PAIN WTF

i now have this stupid pain in my instep/arch and can barely walk and it’s like cool great fuck me ever buying “fun” shoes again i fucking hate being old

Gotta get into a stretching practice again, and make sure the chair I sit in for work had some lower back support. I’m paying the price for not doing these things tonight.

i bought a cute pair of Vans for fun after mostly wearing semi-orthopedic shoes for the past 5 years . i wore them to the movies, and i maybe walked half a block to and from my car. YET NOW I AM IN PAIN WTF

i now have this stupid pain in my instep/arch and can barely walk and it’s like cool great fuck me ever buying “fun” shoes again i fucking hate being old

I think they have a line of vans with better support now

Wait til your Insoles start reeling like the devil’s breath

Oops reeking

these Vans were like v low profile maryjanes w glued-in insoles, i realized i would have had to semi-wreck them to wear insoles in them comfortably so i just returned them instead

i tried to wear ballet flats once. _once_.

in the meantime i have all kinds of fun stretches for my feet to do. fun stretches for _everything_ haha

when I think about my feet and feminine shoes, I really wish I had insisted on wearing men's shoes much earlier in life ... I have wide feet so I have to buy wide width shoes in women's anyway

File under the Fear of becoming invisible dept: I ordered a slice at the pizzeria. Several minutes passed and server asked how he could help me

Lol thought it was only me shit that happened too.

Did you say "waiting on the five slices I ordered and paid for"?

depends on how many other people are at the establishment
if 0, sure go ahead and take it personally if you must
if many, cut some slack? it's probably not about you.

Exactly… I had this experience in my 20s … it definitely isn’t middle age

I had this experience once, in an airport Dunkin Donuts, when absolutely no one else was in line or being served. I gave it a minute, then left and just got coffee and OJ somewhere else.

(I’m 47 - this happened maybe two years ago)

This can reflect the invisibility of the single person - rather than the older person, ime.

A younger coworker started a coed recreational kickball team a few years ago, I was already in my forties and said to myself, I used to play lots of kickball when I was young, I’ll join and show these kids how it’s done. Well pretty early on in the season I kicked as hard as I could and pulled my quad so badly I thought I tore something. My leg swelled up and I could barely walk for weeks. I finally recovered in time for the playoffs, so of course I joined back up, and of course in my first at-bat I re-pulled my quad just as badly as the first time. I gave up on sports after that, I guess I’m too old. Nowadays I am getting ready to buy a pair of readers because I am sick of goggling blindly at fine print.

Not to be a dick, but some pretty
simple stretching can go a long way in that regard. I am 39– I stretch for 15 minutes every morning, and intend on doing so until I die

This can reflect the invisibility of the single person - rather than the older person, ime.

― Dr Drudge (Bob Six)

there are _so many different kinds_ of invisibility haha

it's something i struggle a lot with. am i being treated worse than the other people around me? am i being ignored? if so, _why_?

the whole phenomenon of the "karen" - to me it's kind of one response to not being _acknowledged_. it's one of the things that makes "passing" so hard for me - the way women of a certain age tend to be treated. there are _very much_ gendered differences here, ime.

women, like... we gotta learn to not take being ignored personally, even if there are, you know... even if we are being ignored _because_ we're women in our '40s. cuz if we don't that's when we get called "karens".

The invisibility experience for me was more surreal than anything else, a “am I on Candid Camera?” feeling.

(I didn’t throw a fit or anything - just stood there for a minute or two accepting that this was happening, or not happening, before floating away to another business.)

“Am I really alive? Am I a ghost?”

And while I haven’t worked in the service industry for many, many years, I get that these are repetitive, demanding jobs, and that the 6-7 people working at the combination DD/Baskin Robbins had been grinding since 5 am and were likely burnt to the point that I, a 6’4 black man, just might not have registered in the moment

i had my ear surgery last week. it was a big deal and i assume there are lots of people out there who have the same issue, but live in a place where the diagnosis would not have happened and the surgeon wouldn't live in their town. kind of got mad at him because right when i woke up post surgery he tells me for the first time that i'm not allowed to blow my nose for 10 days. mfer, it's mid April and pollen is everywhere. i have literal scabs on my nose from blowing it so much. not sure if it's a 40s thing, but my allergies have gone from 0 to 100 in the last few years

how's ya hearing?

I hope your surgery went well, Heez. Rather frequently, my right ear gets completely clogged up and I also cannot pick out individual speakers or tell where sounds are coming from. It really struck me how having even just a marginally difficult time hearing can immediately feel isolating.