In an earlier post I mentioned that it’s the decline in Kate’s short-term memory that seems to be most obvious change that is occurring. That is what will finally cause her friends and family to suspect dementia. Here are several recent examples.
1. I just arrived home (10:20) from getting to the hospital at 4:00 this morning after Dad took a fall around 3:00 a.m. She was working on something for PEO and didn’t even ask about Dad. I think she remembered that he had had a fall, but I dont think it was sufficiently present in her mind to automatically ask how he was doing.
2. When I drove up to the house, I saw her glass of iced tea at the curb in front of the house near the mailbox. No doubt she had been doing some pruning around the shrubs and put her tea down. Then she finished without remembering that she had put it down.
3. Last night she said she had lost the power cord to her computer. I walked into her office where I had seen her using the computer yesterday afternoon. The power cord was right by the chair. This is an interesting symptom because it is not just forgetting where she left the cord or where she last used it, but she also has trouble focusing on things when she is looking for them. I am remembering my recent participation in a virtual dementia experience in which our eyesight was diminished with dark light and goggles. I simply didn’t see things that I would have seen otherwise.
4. On Monday of this week I did a little trimming of some shrubs that Kate had asked me to trim. As I was doing so, I found some clippers in the space between the shrubs and the house. She had no doubt been using them, put them down, and then forgot them.
5. One morning this week I left for the office while Kate was out on a walk with a neighbor. As I got close to our street, I saw Kate walking by herself in the direction of our street. Later I asked her about that. She gave me a funny look that made me think she didn’t want me to ask. (Incidentally, frequently she doesn’t want me to ask her about something and has developed a short hand way of communicating that. She says DNA (Do Not Ask.). Then she explained that she and the neighbor had finished walking and as she was returning to the house she walked by our street which is almost a half mile from where I saw her. Because she has always been geographically challenged, I fear that this is one of those things that is going to get us in trouble sometime. We have now had a number of mini-crises surrounding this. The first was in Birmingham when she and a friend had gone to a shower for niece. She has had several similar experiences when going to PEO. One of the most dramatic was when we were going to meet our son, Kevin, and his family at the airport a couple of years ago. She was supposed to meet us there. When she hadn’t arrived in a reasonably length of time, I called her. She was in downtown Knoxville and had no idea how to get to the airport. All of us packed into my car and met her so that she could follow us home.
