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How do you deal with aging?

Aging Well | Last Active: Oct 2 11:38am | Replies (401)

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@thisismarilynb

I really don't understand the question. You may as well ask how do you deal with living? Because that is what you are doing - living. I don't think you need to deal with anything. As long as you are reasonably healthy you just keep on doing what you do and what makes you happy. There is no way to tell how long you will live. I am well along in my 89th year. So many people younger than me are dying, but I can't let that affect me. I just put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Thinking about dying is foolish.

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Replies to "I really don't understand the question. You may as well ask how do you deal with..."

I understand your perspective. However, the question didn't ask about how to die well, or how to live well. The author was specific and requested input from others, not about how to live while aging, but how to age while living. At least, that was my interpretation...perhaps others' were different, as was yours.

As an illustration, I am considerably younger than you, in my early 70's, but I have noticed, and have experienced the effects of, age-related changes and medical conditions over which I have little control now that they have taken place. Could I have been in fewer competitive running races and spared my now-cranky heart? Yup, but I wouldn't have known at the time. Could I have listened to my wife who said I had begun to snore a lot? Yupper! But, now I have AF, thankfully controlled after two pulmonary vein isolations via RF catheter ablation. I have to wear a CPAP machine in perpetuity, take DOACs for life, and I'm told a statin will help to get me there. I think that latter one is a load of hooey, but...I like to stay on my doc's good side. I'm slower on statins, just as I was on metoprolol. Not cognitively...let's not go there, though, because that's another deterioration that comes with aging. And so on....

The point is that we all have to make adjustments, and in our dotage change is harder to accommodate. Some of us handle it relatively well, as I think you must, while others for various reasons struggle. I think the asker might be closer to the latter category, and he/she is seeking some experiential wisdom from us.