I have a family member who was looking pretty demented until it was discovered that his vitamin B level was extremely low. Getting it back up made him more coherent.
God, I hope I don’t look demented! :eek:
Also, I take a lot of minerals and supplements, a list of which I will take with me next week…
Thanks
Q
How can anyone- Alzheimer’s or not- remember what they have forgotten?
I concur with the bst of luck part, and hope you are jumping at shadows.
A quote I heard from some one with loads of experience with the elderly put it pretty good:
If you think you have Alzheimer’s, you are probably fine.
If you show up to some one’s wedding in your pajama’s, and don’t think anything about it, you probably need some help.
Keep us up to date.
Thanks, I will.
Last year, I believe it was, there was a series of reports on NPR about a man about my age who was diagnosed with AZ, and although I didn’t catch all of it, what impressed me was the seeming rapidity of the disease.
I think back on those parts that I did hear, when in the final stages he no longer recognized the flowers/plants he used to love, and then of course, he no longer knew his wife.
Scary.
Q
PS: I just noticed where this thread was moved and had to laugh. This is anything but “mundane and pointless”, but okay, whatever. 
We move a lot of significant announcements here, including illnesses and deaths. It’s not a judgment of the events; this is just the best place for the threads. Meanwhile, hie thee to a doctor and be well.
Somedays I like to pretend the “P” stands for Personal. Stuff which is potentially lifechanging, but ultimately of importance mostly to the person posting it and those who care about that person. Which may in fact include various other people on a message board.
Best wishes.
I wilt hie, and it just struck me as funny, since I myself didn’t know where to place it, and “created” what I thought was a debatable topic.
(I told y’all I don’t do well in GD, and I suppose this proves it.)
I did one of those LOL’s when I saw it and said to myself, 'Well of course ! Mundane! Pointless! My life in 2 words!"
And you know, it really doesn’t matter where the topic sits, because y’all saw it and responded. Thanks.
Been cruising the net and looks like the nearest “memory center” to me is Birmingham, but I will of course need to see the ahem Shrink first (sorry, I know the proper term is psychiatrist 
). Trying to stay"upbeat". No sense courting bad news, I reckon.
Again, thanks to all of you.
Q
Random question (and, IANAD, so, YMMV, and, of course, SAFD): how are you sleeping?
I only ask this because for me a lack of sleep will produce all of those symptoms. Hell, for me depression produced a lot of those symptoms.
Obviously, you’d want to see a doc anyway (they’re better equipped), but you might want to also try looking at your sleep schedule. I have my moments where I think, “um. . .that thing. . .that card you buy suff with. . .gaaah. . .credit card!”, but that’s usually when I’m tired. I’m twenty-five, so I’m fair certain that, in my case, it’s not AZ.
Okay. I’ll take insomnia for 5 thousand, Alex.
The short answer is, yes, I don’t sleep well. I get maybe 5-6 if I’m lucky.
Now as to that other… uh…item you spoke of? Forgetting names of things you deal with daily? Happens to me a lot.
Some of y’all may remember I work in the medical field.
That means I deal with certain terminology (such as “mainstem bronchus”, “You want some crichoid pressure with that, doc?” These and many, many more), but sometimes I will be deep in a conversation about a patient’s condition, and I catch myself suddenly putting on the “brakes” because a very common medical word will fail me. It just will not "be " there. And sometimes the person I am speaking to “finishes” it for me.
And that brings me to another portion of the dilemma: my work.
I love it , and I love taking care of my patients and helping them to breathe better, and it would just kill me if I couldn’t do my work anymore.
Hence, another reason for getting in front of this thing.
I have a pretty big problem with #7. I can’t count how many times I’ve put the milk in the pantry and the cereal box in the fridge, or thrown my keys away and stuck a taco wrapper in my pocket, etc. Also, back when I used to smoke, I would constantly (I’m talking 20-30% of the time) walk into a store, ask for a pack of cigarettes, pay for them, and then walk out without them. I’ve tried talking to doctors about it but they just kind of shrug it off.
Are you convinced that someone you know is stealing odd things from you, like bells and underwear? Do you ever have conversations with people who aren’t there? Maybe they’re not there because they’ve been dead a few decades? Do you confuse loved ones with other people from your past? Have you ever been convinced that the neighbors are now living in your garage? Or that there are aliens in the swimming pool? Is a church chapel being built in your living room? Are you upset when your son calls/visits you, because you’re sure he’s dead?
If the answer to all of the above is No, you’re not much like my great-grandmother who died from it, or my best friend’s grandmother who currently has it. Stress and depression cause every one of those symptoms as well so that list is needlessly alarmist at best. I also know someone who acted totally out of it for a while on a new antidepressant. Like everyone else said, voice your concerns with your doctor.
I use that same analogy! (you beat me to it)
I have #'s 1-4, and #8 at least sometimes. I have done what I call “fallen out of time” a few times in the past year. By that I mean two things: either I cannot recall the date–as in, have no clue where we are in the month, not just “is it the 15th or the 16th?” type stuff or I not only forget where I’m going, but why, when etc.
I also struggle (and it is a struggle at times) to retain new information. It can be frightening. I also have quicksilver mood swings.
BUT. As has been said, you really cannot self-diagnose Alzheimer’s. I can attribute most all of my symptomatology to stress. I find I don’t “process” stress as well as I did when I was younger–that is, I can’t keep up a killing pace and maintain a certain standard of performance. This holds for intellect, emotions and physical things. The sad thing is I am only 45. Then again, perhaps it means there is too much stress in my life…
Go see your doctor. Print out the article and make notes on the bits you feel are most pertinent to you and your concerns. Don’t let him/her brush you off. Good luck.
ETA: I see you’ve got an appt. Good for you. Best of luck.
I like lady friend.
Quasimodem, I read once that if the terms that you forget eventually come back to you, then it’s not Alzheimers. You might not be able to think of it on Tuesday, but if it comes to you easily on Wednesday, “it’s still there.”
I’m not in the medical field, however, and don’t really know anything about the illness.
I’m almost 65 and I ask myself if I am losing it all the time. Adding to the problem of age is a lot of medication and short term memory problems resulting from electric shock treatments in my late teens and early twenties. I also have chronic low grade depression (dysthemia) which affects memory.
You know, I could have Alzheimers and nobody would notice.
I’ll second that. I have sleep apnea and had the “on the tip of my tongue” syndrome real bad before treatment. When I’m not sleeping well, most recently because of the pollen in the air, it recurs. Looking at that list, I’ll add the “lack of initiative” to the list of symptoms that were reduced after I got the sleep apnea treated. Yeah, I’d get literally nothing done all weekend because I didn’t feel like it. Now I get nothing done because I spend all weekend on the SDMB!
Just wishing you all the best for your appointment next week, Quasi. Hope you start finding out the answers to your questions about yourself soon. Uncertainty is right up there on my own list of least favourite things in life. Take care.
I suspect you are jumping at shadows. Good luck.
Maybe you are just getting old like myself.
Quasi, yes, I see your dilemma, I certainly do. Four of us in our early 50s have chatted about our memories and other mental processes getting worse. Though, my 83 year old friend said he didn’t have any difficulty with it, and in at least a few ways he was more competent than we were (for example he kept his appointments fairly well without writing them down, whereas I’ve written all mine in a pocket calendar for 20 years now).
All the items on that linked list were matters of degree, though their examples in a few places gave pretty good measures of the degree. I have some examples for each of the items on the list, but none of the examples seemed clearly in the Alzheimer’s category as opposed to the normal category. It seems like looking at a list like that doesn’t really get you a good indication of whether you have the early warning signs you’d want to pick up on, if starting treatment as early as possible is important. I think the list would be better for deciding why somebody has lost their abilities after the fact, than for initiating treatment at an optimal time.
Our GP once told Mrs. Napier that if she was worried about Alzheimer’s, she probably didn’t have it, echoing a couple of earlier posts. And we know somebody who developed Alzheimer’s to the point of becoming unable to work in her early 50’s, and she certainly did not seem to realize she was changing.
Please, if you don’t mind, post what you learn from any medical consults!
Also, consider some strategies that keep mental processing working better, whether you have Alzheimer’s or not. For my part, as an example, I’m still learning new computer programming languages. I’m sure the rapidly rewarding, hours long videogamelike back and forth is good exercise, at least in one particular category of mental processing. It seems to me that having things that stimulate your mind, including by being interesting enough that you want to keep thinking about them, is a good strategy.
Oh, and, from reading your post, I did NOT come to the conclusion that you probably have Alzheimer’s. I think you don’t, or at least not far enough along to be detectable in normal human activities and interaction. So, you shouldn’t be worried, though if you want to check further into it more power to you. I think you’re 58.
Sorry I didn’t say that at first. I forgot. Damn, why’d I forget?