He had been a steel worker all his life and had the iron grip and the iron will that working in big steel gave to men of his era.
Even in his 70's he was a force to be reckoned with.
Hard as nails and tough as pig iron Herman was struck down in the cruelest fashion.
It was not a heart attack or a stroke.
It was not prostate cancer or crippling degenerative arthritis.
He did have high blood pressure and eventually diabetes but these were easy to control.
No, Herman went blind.
We are going back now maybe 12 years or more and I first began to hear the term Age Related Macular Degeneration (ARMD) for the first time.
Honestly, before that I had not heard of it.
You have to remember I have been a doc for a while. Even Alzheimer's was not a commonly used term when I got out of school and into practice.
We just called it senility or "hardening of the arteries".
For all the good the current drugs seem to do for it we might as well still call it that since naming it correctly has not made it ay easier to treat and NO ONE can honestly say we are doing a better job of managing it than 20 years ago.
It’s funny how many diseases of aging seem to parallel each other and have so much in common.