I will Pray for you my friend. God Bless and model on!!!
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Fine topic. I’m not debilitated yet but an issue I have that modeling makes worse is neck pain. I was rear ended at a stoplight 30 years ago and my neck has never fully healed. My posture has never been good, but I tend to hunch over my modeling area even more than usual, especially when assembling small parts. At some point, either I’m going to get the correct surgery (I’ve had 2 fusions and multiple steroid shots in my neck) or I won’t be able to continue working on models.
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I love the second one as a title glad someone is thinking about names so bravo and I’m going to borrow your idea and relocate it straight to the threads title. Many thanks for your creativity. My internet is very bad so this is just a quick note.
I feel your pain. Three separate neck injuries, including being swatted unconscious by a sailboat boom, 
Despite decades of failed treatments, things have never been quite the same. One of the things I have done to help ease the strain on my neck is to build a set of risers to lift my work off my desk so that I don’t have to look down at my projects. The risers are basically 8 inch diameter by 2 inch slices of a hardwood log, sanded smooth. I have 6 of them, which I stack up and wrap with tape to hold them together at the desired height. This works well for me, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to continue modeling. 
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I admire the persistence and dedication of the modelers sharing their respective struggles to keep modeling.
Issues with hands going numb after fifteen minutes or so of modeling activities started in 2003. I moved to other hobby activities. By 2019, hands were OK for two minutes of modeling activity. Discovered it was severe carpal tunnel. Two surgeries later plus two months to heal and my hands were good for 2-3 hour sessions again without issues. On a few occasions have went 4 hours non-stop but my posterior is usually complaining before then. Now my hands are as goof as they ever were for model building.
Vision has changed and that’s proved very frustrating. With astigmatism corrective lens had better than 20/20 vision (20/15) for many years into my early forties. The first hint of aging was it became harder to focus refocus looking far to near at work bench. Focus speed went from instant to slow to very slow to nope. Then my eyes changed rapidly. With bifocals & OptiVisor and 2x as much light I can see as well for modeling as I ever did. However, the bifocals & OptiVisor do slow things down somewhat.
I’m grateful.
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I’m a dentist 40 yrs in. The tasks are complex. The magnification allows for more precision. That’s all I meant.
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I’m sorry if I came off unappreciative of your advice. I have used magnifying tools for a long time. Seems more difficult now to use in conjunction with my bifocals. I went through cataract surgeries a couple of years ago, boy was that fun but it did restore my vision to where I didn’t need glasses and I thought sweet never a problem again. I got glasses again this year for both close and distance I did lose my night vision and in fog it’s all white so I can’t drive in fog at all anymore. I continue to search for better lighting solutions for my work area and have found led lights are pretty good.
Scale wise I’ve never really limited myself to one particular scale. I’ve worked on subjects from 1/1000 right through 1/9. For me the deciding factor is the subject if I like what I’m looking at I’m going to get it. Recently I’ve been collecting the Bandai 1/12 Star Wars series of figures including them tiny ships the Death Star was a real pain. I’m sill not finished with the walker and blockade runner. Finished the super star destroyer and the regular star destroyer.
For me if I give up some of those scales I start to limit myself from many interesting topics. Aircraft I don’t go smaller than 1/72 as I tried the 1/144 years ago and that was a disaster and that’s long before I began to have my health decline on me. I’ve favoured 1/35 for years especially since they have started bringing out watercraft and helicopters. My hobby store guy has told me there’s a Stuka in the pipeline which I find interesting. Figure wise since my son does war hammer topics my scales has realigned to from I think 28mm through to 1/9. I have a number of 1/35, 1/24, 1/12, 1/16 kits that I work on including yoda in 1/6.
My hands do give me problems sometimes losing some feeling for a little while, it’s probably diabetic neuropathy so then I have to work the hand until I get cooperation from my body. I’m a stubborn bull headed ex soldier and cop that doesn’t like to back away from challenges. My hands have given me issues since being wrapped around an FN C1 in -40 on winter warfare training to counter that I started cross stitching around 30 years ago in order to force my fingers and hands to cooperate with me in doing fine movements but today threading a needle is a patience exercise. When I do get stuck with a task either my wife or son will help me with the task at hand.
There are always options to get around a problem. I would be interested in any suggestions you have light wise. I have a third hand system for soldering coming now as most things have photo etch stuff now and CA glue, small photo etch pieces and shaky hands can lead to glued fingers. 
Most of the time my internet is mostly useless at the moment so I have to limit my responses so I don’t get dropped. I do intend to answer all questions, comments and suggestions in any of the threads I’ve put comments in. I lost one the other day when the service dropped on me. I appreciate any and all comments and suggestions from everyone!!
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Losing posts due to computer issues
Use Notepad or some other text editing program to write the text and then copy-paste it into the post.
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My problem is actually the internet provider for my area. We have connections that average less than 10 bytes per second. Presently we are waiting on star link to move another 3 degrees North so my community will be under its coverage. We are at times weeks without being able to get a connection more than a couple of minutes at a time. Only one provider and the old 56k dial up modems were more reliable than what we have now!
I hear ya my last 4 days have been pretty rough. I’ve moved past good days and now have varying degrees of bad days. But we always have to do our best resisting the disease.
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I know the feeling of short arms I went through cataract surgery and not needing glasses for a few years however this year I got glasses back along with bifocals and have been getting used to them again. I guess in the end our parts do wear out.
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Yep. It sucks to grow old …
Had a quick look at Google maps, seems to be LOTS of spare nature around where you live.
I live further north but the Swedish climate is totally different, love the summer nights though even if winter sucks.
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