I’d always pictured my riding into old age on a chariot of over-enunciation, tales of the Raj and deep violet dressing gowns heavy with the yellow stench of good cigars.
I’d never really thought about the physical limitations that old age throws at you. And I suppose that old people don’t really think about them all either. Many of the symptoms of old age are so stealthy, so patient that you simply forget what it felt like to be fully functional.
But this treatment has brought the full force of old age to me with dread speed. My fingertips are numb – so I’m already fiddling (pensioner like) for change and with the lids of coffee cups. The drugs make it harder and harder to pee, demonstrating the effects of the swollen prostate most of us have in the future. The hair has gone – and suddenly hats litter the house as I try to combat the effects of sun upon shiny pate. My energy leaves not slowly, but all at once, like an elderly cell phone that can no longer hold a charge. And of course there’s the proximity of death; ever present, hovering just about my left shoulder and whispering a dark incantation.
No being old is not all it’s cracked up to be.
I think I’ll buy myself a motorbike and see if fate helps me escape the slow decline into doddery-ness.
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