A few days ago, I asked my driver to make a deposit for me. The following day, I asked him for the bank receipt. He told me that he had handed me the receipt when we were in the car on the way home the previous evening. I checked my wallet and sure enough the receipt was right there. The scary thing is that I had zero recollection of ever receiving the receipt from him. I don't even recall him handing me anything in the car.
If this were the only incident this season, it wouldn't bother me, but over the last few days, I've been slipping. I referred to the JDK as an SDK. I sent the wrong dates to a travel agent. I was asked several times: ARE YOU SURE about the dates? I said yes, I'm sure (this, despite the fact that my to-do list had the correct dates written in black-and-white. Taken in isolation, these incidents are nothing, but when they happen in rapid succession, they make you ask, what's happening to me?
I've known myself to go through occasional bouts of forgetfulness. The last time this happened wholesale was just when I assumed office at OIR. My goal at some point was to get through one day without forgetting anything. Admittedly, the past few days have been at the heightened levels of crazy that you'd expect from the Christmas season. It could be that these "senior moments" are the result of having too much on my mind.
What makes the situation ominous for me, though, is that the maternal side of my family has a history of dementia (yes, that explains a lot, doesn't it?). Back in the late 1970s and early 1980's, my grandmother had all the usual symptoms of Alzheimer's, though she was never formally diagnosed. In recent years, my own mom was diagnosed as having had a series of small strokes that have led to mild cognitive impairment. The behavioral result is she is very forgetful.
Because these chronic conditions take place over months or years, it's easy to rationalize them away by saying, oh, I've just been so busy. Eventually, they become harder to ignore.
The effect on me is that each slip scares me a little. A pattern of slips? That has me shaken.
Fortunately, there's enough awareness of these conditions to focus energies on prevention and coping. My to-do list is essential. A healthy diet and regular exercise are good for just about everything, including memory. Keeping mentally and socially active are good, too. A support system helps you cope and I am blessed to have people in my life who have my back, who point out the slips in the gentlest of ways. Assuming the conclusion is inevitable (and I don't believe it is), my goal is to reach it as gracefully and with as much dignity as possible.
