As we age . . .

As Bette Davis is reported to have said, old age is not for sissies.

The good news is that the one thing that doesn’t seem to wear out on old(er) people is the sense of humor. Without a sense of humor, old(er) people would probably give up and limp off to die in the woods, because Ms. Davis did not lie – old age really, truly, is not for sissies.

I am older than many of my friends, so I’m the test case. They get to see what to expect by watching my body parts fail. It started at 40 when I went to bed one night perfectly able to see things up close and awoke the next morning unable to read a book without bifocals or reading glasses. It seems to me that every year something else goes wrong.

Not long ago, I told my eye doctor that I cannot see very well, even with my contacts or glasses. After the vision exam, he told me the problem is that since I have always been very near sighted and now am also very far sighted, it’s simply no longer possible for any contacts or glasses to give me crisp, clear vision. His advice on the situation: “Pray for cataracts.” (The good news here is that once the prayed-for cataracts are repaired, i.e., the eye’s lens replaced, I will be able to see the items on my bedside table without my glasses for the first time since I was a child.)

A new one for me is having issues with hearing. My hearing difficulties are usually due to ambient sound – my old(er) friends and I can’t always understand each other when there is a certain level of background conversation or music. Sometimes when we gather, several conversations will go on at once, and there is some funny miscommunication thrown in amongst the “What did you say??” and “Pardon me? I didn’t hear that.” The other night, Becky told a story in which her daughter said, “Dad is old.” Since Mike is several years younger than I am, I said, “Oh, then I am past old,” at which point Kristin (who is actually quite a bit younger than I am) started laughing and said, “What?! Did you just say you’re an asshole?”

Sometimes the problem is not so much that we are, in fact, getting older. Sometimes, we aren’t really that old; young(er) people just think we are.

Several years ago, I suddenly began to see crazy flashy lights around my sphere of vision. This is the Facebook post that resulted from my visit to the optometrist, where I saw the youngest member of the practice:

So, today I had an emergency eye-doctor appointment because there was some question as to whether my retina had detached. Happily (thank you, Lord!), my retina was not detached -- a gelatinous mass called a VCD or PVC or some such detached from the retina, causing the vision problem. "A perfectly normal occurrence," quoth Dr. Twelve-Year-Old, "when we get old."

(Hilariously, one of my young friends posted this reply: “PVC?? Isn't that a drug?!? LMAO! Or a pipe?? I guess you know I don't do drugs. LOL.” It’s always refreshing to know it’s not just we old people who aren’t up-to-date on the drug scene.)

The extremely young, not very tactful, eye doctor reminded me of the general-practice physician I saw when I was in my 40s and did not consider myself old at all. This doc was fresh out of medical school, and was so young that my friend (who also saw him) and I referred to him as “the baby doctor.” One time I saw the baby doctor about a cyst growing by my eye. He removed the cyst and as he was stitching me up said, “It’s great that the cyst was right here. You won’t even be able to see the stitches. They will blend right in with your crow’s feet.”

My sister wrote this in an email last week:

As we age  . . .

Today when I got up, I had bags under my eyes as I have for weeks now, but I clearly slept mostly on my right side, because my bags did not match – the right one was much larger than the left. WTH? My left eye looked like a weekend getaway bag, my right like a steamer trunk. We are not amused.

Indeed, Susan. Indeed.