Q. I’m starting to feel concerned about my mother’s memory. She’s turning 75 next week and she seems to be more forgetful these days. She constantly misplaces her car keys. She repeats stories about the nuances of her day. She completely forgot about my daughter’s birthday last month but remembered it a week later. When we run errands together and she drives, she sometimes misses the street we’re supposed to take; she chalks this up to being distracted by our conversation. I worry she may be in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. How can you tell if what she’s experiencing is just old age forgetfulness or if it is dementia?
A. I empathize with your situation. It’s difficult to watch our loved ones struggle with any illness, and it can be concerning when our loved ones begin to act differently. This is a question that comes up often, and while I can’t diagnose your mother, I can offer a few insights to help you determine your next steps.
Even the healthiest of healthy older adults will have memory lapses from time to time. This is just a normal part of aging. Just as we can’t run as fast as we could in our youth, or our skin is filled with wrinkles instead of being taunt, our brain too is affected by the aging process. Have you ever misplaced your eyeglasses only to find them on the top of your head? This is normal aging. All of us will have memory lapses from time to time. We might be overstressed at work, or we take on more than we can accomplish realistically, and this causes our brains to experience a brief hiccup, if you will. After a few moments, our brain catches up and we find our eyeglasses, right where we left them, on top of our head. Other normal memory lapses include forgetting a new friend’s name, forgetting an event or appointment that is unusual in our routine, or forgetting why we walked into a room in the first place. The key here is that the memory lapse was brief. Eventually, the brain caught up, hopefully before we were charged for that doctor’s appointment that we (almost) missed.
When memory lapses become more and more frequent, then it might be more than just normal aging. Here are a few examples of normal forgetfulness and not so normal forgetfulness. Forgetting where you placed your car keys is quite normal. Forgetting that you even have a car is not normal. Forgetting the names of the new neighbors is normal, forgetting your children and grandchildren’s names is not normal. Forgetting how to drive to that new store is normal, forgetting how to drive to the grocery store where you’ve shopped for over a decade is not normal. Forgetting a doctor’s appointment, you made over six months ago is normal, forgetting your standing weekly hair appointment is not normal.
I recommend making an appointment with your mother’s physician since you have these concerns. Her doctor can refer you to a neurologist or other specialist so that you can hopefully get the answers that you need. If anything, now is a great time to establish a baseline for your mother’s memory. Later on, down the road, her doctor can refer to her baseline and determine whether or not she is in the early stages of dementia.
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