Ask A Genius 1241: I have no idea, also aging
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/02/01
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Here’s a topic. If you’re on Facebook and you like those zit-popping clips from Instagram or wherever, try searching for farrier or blacksmith recovery videos. They take out nails and rocks embedded in horse hooves. Sometimes, the hoof grows around the rock; they dig it out, and there’s pus and blood.
Rick Rosner: As much as I like popping my zits, I’ve never watched a full episode of Dr. Pimple Popper. I’m not sure I’m totally into that stuff. But yeah, if you’re into scooping stuff out of people, horses could offer some gruesome examples.
Jacobsen: You were on a panel with David Zucker.
Rosner: Not that I know of. Who’s David Zucker? The guy who wrote Airplane?
Jacobsen: No, that’s you on a panel. Is this fake? David Zucker, Catherine Clinch, Jonathan Fernand, Bill Wheeler—Digital Hollywood. Great panel.
Rosner: Maybe years ago. I’ve been on panels before, but not in at least five years.
Jacobsen: Yeah. Check this. Someone posted it a month ago: Ken Pisani, screenwriter, Emmy nominee, LA Times bestseller in 2017, Thurber Prize runner-up, and some artist of pants.
This has to be old. What am I looking at here? Let’s see.
Rosner: Oh, yeah, that has to be old. That’s from before COVID. My hair looks less ghostly. Weird. Why’d they post it now?
Jacobsen: No idea.
Rosner: So I made a mistake. Part of aging is that your head weighs around 11 pounds, not 8, as commonly believed. And when you reach a certain age, you can strain your neck if you don’t manage that weight properly. That’s exactly what I did. I was working on a micromosaic, probably bent over it for too long, and the muscles at the back of my neck went into spasm. They’ve been sore all week.
I changed the pillows to see if that helps tonight. In the meantime, I have to keep my head in a weird position and look ridiculous.
You said I look like a grandpa who doesn’t know how to use technology, and I said I look like the last days of Howard Hughes. That’s just one issue. Another issue is that I’ve struggled with hair loss my whole life, and now the thickness of each strand has decreased by about 40%, which gives me that mad scientist flyaway hair.
Jacobsen: For those who can’t see what I’m seeing, there’s definitely some mad scientist flyaway hair.
Rosner: Once you reach your 40s, your eyes begin to change. The lenses start to harden, reducing the ability to focus at different distances. I grew up in Colorado at a high altitude, and as a kid, I did plenty of dumb things, like staring at the sun. Fortunately, I haven’t shown any signs of cataracts yet, which can often result from excessive exposure to UV light over a lifetime.
I had my hearing tested recently, and I’ve lost a noticeable amount of hearing at higher frequencies. I’ll likely need hearing aids soon.
I was anemic for a while, which made my mouth more sensitive to spicy foods, especially chillies. Now, I can’t eat them without tearing up.
My throat has something similar to esophageal dysmotility. It’s not the correct term, but my throat muscles have weakened. This means liquids can sometimes go down my windpipe if I’m not careful while drinking, causing coughing fits. Pills can also get stuck in my throat. It can dissolve there if needed. If it’s a c there, it stings terribly, depending on what’s inside.
I’ve lost about a third of my physical strength. I used to weigh around 170 pounds, or at least in the high 160s, with low body fat and muscle. Now I’m down to 140 pounds. I’m still strong for someone my weight, but it’s nowhere near where I was when I had significantly more muscle.
My hemorrhoids are gone because I had the internal ones surgically removed. Internal hemorrhoids are the ones that tend to bleed and cause anemia, and they don’t have many nerve endings. Hence, the surgery wasn’t too painful. The doctors left the external ones alone because those have more nerve endings, and fixing them would have been very painful. I remember having them treated when I was 16, and it was awful. Now, I’m not bleeding every time I go to the bathroom. Oddly, the surgery tightened my rectum slightly, so now my bowel movements are much narrower—let’s call them “svelte.”
What else? Oh, my toenails are completely ruined by fungus. The big toenails are especially bad. I’ve never known anyone who’s successfully gotten rid of toenail fungus, even though all kinds of treatments are on the market. There are oral antifungal pills, but they can have serious side effects, like liver damage, so it’s not worth it. Plus, the fungus would return because my feet are often damp due to varicose veins. I have to wear compression socks—three layers on each leg—to keep my legs from swelling and to prevent blood clots.
So that’s a snapshot of my current state. I’m still active, able to run and move around, and steady. My brain still works well, but many annoying reminders of aging exist.
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