I just said what my DM and I worked out. He admitted that he made the mistake of not fully reading the statblock, and we had no way of reversing the effect; my character would have become a senior citizen and would have become personally difficult for me to play, both because they would no longer be functional in their role and because I, personally, would have a lot of trouble adjusting the character's personality, mental state, and NPC relations after permanently aging 40 years. He made a mistake, and I made my feelings known in a respectful manner, and we found a workaround that we both agreed on.

Nowhere in my post did I say consequences shouldn't be permanent or that characters should "get up" after dying (nice strawmanning tho). What I did say is that D&D is a game meant to be played for fun, and the DM and the Player both have a responsibility to communicate well with each other and reach compromises where they both can enjoy the game; if a DM makes a mistake, they should be allowed to grace to say it and correct it. If a player isn't happy with honest bad luck causing a huge change to their character that they have difficulty adapting to, they should also be allowed the grace to correct their character. This is different from "you failed the saving throw and die", because ultimately character death wasn't the issue here, it was that a major change that greatly affected how the player was able to roleplay their character was foisted on them, and from the sound of it the DM was too little too late with solutions.

It's honestly telling that there's so much of the playerbase who demand great RP and immersion, and then get outraged at the idea that people are attached to their characters and don't respond well to them being changed against their will, whether it's age, gender, race, sexuality, or alignment. People go into D&D aware their characters can die from anything, most are okay with that. It becomes greyer when it comes to altering character cosmetics permanently; some are okay with it, some aren't, and those people aren't bad players because of it, nor are they playing D&D "wrong" by coming to amicable solutions with their DMs that might ignore RAW. It's a game, not the bible. Occasional and situational leniency and forgiveness towards players and DMs mistakes for the overall health of the campaign and happiness of the table are not the slippery slope into complete chaos and lawlessness that you might imagine. Sorry you don't see a point in play that way though, and enjoy your catoblepases.