Haven’t skated or snow boarded in 12 years….. adulting sucks! My dad hung up the car thing back in 2012 at 68. Was just getting too hard for him to crawl around the car. I’ve been an auto tech like forever and my biggest downfall the last 3 years has been my addiction to laziness. I REALLY need to get back on an exercise regiment, and scale back my all natural diet of craft beer and hot wings . I just flipped the 55 card so I gotta take care of the best tool I’ve got for making $$$, my well being. Easier said than done… happy new year!

I just bought an I beam with a trolley and winch to put in my shop. My joke (kinda) is that it is there to help me pull my [censored] up off the shop floor when needed.

61 year old industrial mechanic. I can still do a hard days work but I don't want to do anything when I get home. Moving from 12 hour shifts to 8's soon, that should help.

While reading the "How Many More Years Of Racing You Got In Ya?" thread, it made me think, at what age did some of you start hurting or noticing your bodies starting to tell you that you were aging or that you've worked too hard for too long?

I'm about half the age as some of you on here but, I'm starting to feel stuff already and it concerns me a little. My index finger has been hurting me the last 6 or so months and I finally had a Dr. look at it, arthritis. What, I'm in my 30's, [censored]?

I worked manual labor jobs for about 8 or so years of my working life but, I've had a desk job for the past 16-17. I tinker with stuff all the time though, I'm re-doing my kitchen right now. I really think the arthritis in my finger is related to all the siding I cut by hand for my garage a few years ago.

There are a lot of guys that don't talk about stuff like this, so: I'm surprised when people do talk about it how many have issues.

So, when did your body start to let you ......?

I'm 63 and did the 12 hour days 6 days a week for 15 years, the last 10 as an industrial mechanic. Dec. 1 I started a 40 hour a week job working on little robots. I never realized how bad that 12 hour stuff was killing me. 40 hours is like being retired.

Hope it works for you too.

I’m thinking you hit the nail on the head for me, all those symptoms I have for maybe 6-8 years now. I’ve burned up the internet looking for a cause always thinking vascular problems but with tests they all cleared.(did have a stent put in the lower aorta 4 years ago). Some days I feel like a tuck run over me, my legs are the worst can’t pick my feet up and stumble over lent and I’ve fell 3-4 times this year alone. First of the week I’ll call to get checked with my primary doc. Thanks in a way, btw I’m 72 and still working but getting slower
Where did you get the prednisone?
Update, found some in my cabinet stash (2004 but looks good)

Be careful with prednisone. Since you already have some you probably already know the side affects of it but for anyone else reading this I’ll outline a few. Number ONE for me is it made me a cranky [censored]. Everything set me off. Another one was eating. It made me eat anything that I could find. And with that comes weight gain. The pounds went on so fast I couldn’t believe it. I was 210 when I started on it and 242 six weeks later. That’s how long I was on it. Then my doctor said ok, let’s start some other treatments and by the way, that weight HAS to come off and I want you to get to 200. I can tell you that that was 2006 and I’m still not to 200 yet. I hover at 208-215. Going from 242 back down to 220 was a real PITA. It took 16 months to lose that weight. Went on quick, came off slow. And I worked at it.

There are a couple of other side effects with any steroid like that that I can’t think of, but those were the two worst for me. So I’d see your doctor before you went back on it. And don’t let any doctor tell you that you are blood negative for RA so you don’t have it. That test is pretty much junk.

One last thing. If you do have RA and you start getting treated for it you’ll very quickly learn how many people actually have every RA symptom but don’t know they have it. I have correctly diagnosed 5 different people I know with RA just by looking at them and hearing their symptoms. Also, many doctors who believe the blood test when it comes up negative will call what is really RA fibromyalgia. And it’s not. In my opinion, very few people have fibromyalgia. There is a form of RA (I forget what it’s called because there are many types of RA including ankylosing spondylitis, psoriasis and many others) where the immune system attacks the thin lining between the muscle and the bone. And that gets called fibromyalgia when it’s not. People think the pain is in the muscle but it’s in that thin lining.

To wrap up this long post, it’s borderline criminal how far behind medicine is on RA and it’s related diseases. It’s almost borderline criminal how often it’s misdiagnosed. So if you have joints that hum (I can tell you there are times when my joints hurt so bad it feels like my joints are tuning forks that vibrate), hot joints, swollen joints or when you hurt everywhere but you know it’s not muscle pain because you know what that feels like it’s almost always some form of RA. The sooner it gets treated the less joint damage you’ll have, plus you get ahead of all the ancillary stuff you get with RA like heart disease, rapid eye sight changes (I literally got up one day, went to work and couldn’t read my micrometers and it was over night...I had to run to the Dollar Store and buy a pair of readers and that pissed me off because I hadn’t been diagnosed yet and had no idea why that happened) and organ damage.

RA is a horrible disease and I’m pretty passionate about getting the word out there any chance I get because of how long I went undiagnosed and misdiagnosed.

Was employed in the auto repair business from 1974 until this past Spring. What is pain? To me, it’s my body lying to me. I ignore it. Treat it like an itchy mosquito bite. It bugs you but forget about it. Fortunately at 67 I can still go out to my home shop and work on cars nearly everyday. Why? Because I like to.
Doug

i started to have pain in my 20's, and after MANY years and many doctor visits later, with nothing concrete diagnosed, mr. "tough guy" [me ] just gave up and learned to live with it.
after i got married, my wife talked me into doctor visits to figure out what was REALLY wrong with me [don't start..... ].
after many years, i was finally diagnosed with MS, and apparently, it had started WAY earlier in my life, but i just ignored it.
so being old now, pain is just something i look forward to every day. no big deal anymore.
it has also been noted by someone else's response, my motto for years has been : "no matter how bad i have it, there is someone out there that has it worse !"
i just play the cards that were dealt, and hope i can get my junk to at least run around the block before i croak !
someone stopped by this past summer and asked what i was doing. i told him : "i'm getting ready for the estate sale !"