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My 40s Gave Me Health Anxiety

I keep getting reminded of my mortality.

Sarah TC
Middle-Pause
5 min readOct 4, 2024

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Black and white photo of a woman kneeling with her head resting on a bed.
Photo by Sydney Sims on Unsplash

I had dinner with one of my closest friends a few days before turning 40. “Doesn’t stuff start to fall off when you hit 40?”

I sought her opinion as she had three decades more life experience than I did. I saw her as a shining example of ageing well. She told me I was being silly and that life (and the human body) doesn’t start falling apart at 40.

I stopped worrying until a day later. I chipped a tooth. British NHS dentistry is pretty hard to access at the moment. Unless my tooth caused me unspeakable agony or caused my cheeks to swell up like a chipmunk, I’d have to wait a couple of weeks.

The big day arrived, and I officially turned 40. I felt a bit of a pinch when I changed my socks, and my big toenail came off with them.

I was right. It felt like the metaphorical glue holding my body together had passed its best-before date. Things were actually starting to fall off.

The dentist patched up my tooth, or what was left of it. Due to previous dental work, it was more amalgam filling than enamel. I was thankful it was right at the back of my mouth, as it was now a fetching charcoal grey. My teeth aren’t particularly great. My gums had receded. I was literally and metaphorically “long in the tooth”.

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Sarah TC
Sarah TC

Written by Sarah TC

I am a queer, neurodivergent mental health nurse, academic and PhD student. I write about the things that matter to me and my community.

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