the new old me

At time of writing , I retire early tommorow. My head isnt sure as I like my job and the people I work with. My body is counting down the minutes w, while screaming in pain to sit up straight while typing.

My mind is 55, my body feels 105 and I dont know whats supposed to happen next. I am going to my usual heavy metal concerts, tonight and saturday. The change there is that I am at the back and not the front anymore. My wife is much younger then me, which helps as long as I dont try and keep up with her.

Maybe I need to give some details to this confused missive. Five years ago I caught covid, this became long covid, which ended up as fibromyalgia and asthma. For the un initiated Fibro causes constant pain, poor sleep, memory trouble and a myriad of other things. Its incurable, possibly as no one is sure of the cause exactly. If you have constant pain and nothing else can be found during tests , fibro is what's left. Asthma has appeared as well, just to make things interesting.

So , I have symptoms of being old as well as of a disability. When I wake up from fitfull sleep I have no idea of my limits or how I will feel. I am a stranger in my own body, the warning lights are on but I cant get the parts. I don't know the speed I can operate at, how long I can work and how often I need to pull over for a rest.

The asthma is affected by weather, dust and cat hair. I live with a smoker, 4 cats and someone who constantly needs the heating on. So that's fairly predictable. In the old days , I would play football or cricket and would know which bits were going to hurt. Today there's no predicting anything. I can go for a walk one day and have no affect, the next time I do the walk i have massive pain.

If only there could be a check list, telling me the day ahead would include back pain and also upper right leg. Later you will have a headache and brain fog will start appearing in the middle of sentences. It would help me to plan my day a bit better. Maybe on the check list it would say, you can shop for this hour, maybe have and conversations early in the day.

There are jokes about going into rooms and forgetting why you are there. That's a lot of my day, my phones is packed full of reminders of what to do and where to go. Luckily after tomorrow I can remove the notes to go to work. Though I am sure I will still have a pile of jobs to get through soon enough. The latest question is, will i get worse as i get older, fibro is a disability that shouldn't get worse. So in a few years as I approach my sixtieth birthday, what will I be like. Fibro is something you have to learn to manage, there is no cure so just manage it.

So , in five years I wake up and my leg hurts. I take my pile of medication and it still hurts. Is it my age, fibro or some older person condition I have acquired . Apologies to any old people, its something else I will have to carefully navigate in due course. Maybe any new problems will be kind enough to arrive one by one, with a handy gap in between them. Maybe a new one every new years day so I know when they are due. Like a reverse car service, "here you are sir, its time for high blood pressure, see you next years for your diabetes"

Maybe they could be arranged for the day after your birthday, the spread out dates would help the local health service to cope. Otherwise every new year there would be a queue of aching old people.

Unfortunatly theres no route map, no sat nav for getting older. I will have to keep scrambling and stumbling forward, to see whats next.