Today it was me taking the big plastic clip out of my hair, holding it in my hand when I was in the kitchen, and then tossing it in the dishpan of soaking dishes.
Huh?
Fortunately I don’t do stuff like this very often, but I’m always startled when I do. Tivo remote in the kitchen cupboard, calling a friend by dialing a phone number she hasn’t had in over 20 years, (momentarily) starting the coffee by placing the glass carafe directly on the burner… fun stuff like that.
And while I started this thread in fun, I am prompted to ask a question that’s occurred to me: does anyone know if persons suffering from dementia of any kind have ever done anything severely dangerous to themselves, like reach into a running sink disposal? I always think about that when I’m doing something which, if I were a little stupider, could be very painful.
Yes, sometimes they do. My grandmother had it, and now my mother has it. Mostly, the danger comes from her not remembering what she’s doing. She’s left stove burners on, and later puts flammable stuff down on them. My father has to inject her insulin, and give her her pills when she needs them. She’s apt to wander out of the house at night, which is very worrisome. My father is thinking about putting locks on the doors, but then he’s worried about fires.
Personally, I plan on taking an overdose of Vicodin or something if/when I think I’m starting to show signs of Alzheimer’s.
The last straw for a friends mother was putting her dinner in the microwave and instead of selecting 3 minutes putting in 30. Not sure what type of plate it was on but apparently there were flames, toxic smoke and scorched counter tops and wall. The microwave was a toasted and Mom is now in an assisted living centre where she get way more interaction than she used to with friends, meals served 4x a day and a pendant she can use to call for medical help if she needs it.
She refused to move in with any of her three daughters on the grounds that they bored her She’s still very active and very social just not to attentive to detail.
I’ve been putting cereal boxes next to the milk carton in the frig, several times a year, since age ten or so. But that’s ADD, not Alzheimer’s. Chronic brain farts.
I don’t know if it’s Alzheimer’s or ennui, but I often forget what I’ve done the week before until I look it up on the cannelloni. Today I wasn’t sure why I had the scissors but I wasn’t running with them.
Cereal in the fridge, milk in the cupboard? Check!
Forgetting I turned on a burner until I smell something? Check!
Walking into a room and having absolutely no idea what my original goal was? Check!
Blanking on names I should never forget (kids, husband, dog, etc.)? Check!
Leaving the house for work, and having to turn around, go back home, and change out of my slippers and into work shoes? Check!
Mentally subtracting my birth year from the current year to figure out how old I am? Check!
Does this mean that I get to go somewhere where others serve meals to me several times a day, take care of the laundry, and so forth? If so, sign me up!
PS:
Am I missing something? You keep your calendar on pasta, 6ImpossibleThings?
My poor grandpa had dementia and once we found a pair of his pants hanging on the line, painted with house paint. He’d lost some weight and thought since he couldn’t sew he’d just glue his seams with superglue. Because they made a shiny line going down he thought he’d give them a fresh coat of white flat to make them nice again.
He was a house painter for 55 years. I guess it made sense at the time.
I’ve set a pot full of water on the stove on high, only to forget about it until all the water was boiled away and it was smoking. I also once managed to blow up a Pyrex baking dish full of cookies because I put it on a hot burner. I’m 34. I hate to see what happens when I get much older.
I am occasionally forgetful but I don’t have Alzheimer’s. However, I’ve had two grandmothers with it, and I wish that their symptoms were as cute and funny as throwing their hair bows into the sink. Instead it’s more like forgetting the names and faces of everyone that you have ever known and loved and being trapped in some kind of mental fugue state where you think it’s 1950 but for some reason nobody will let you go home.
If the OP has actually been diagnosed with dementia, then she has my deepest and most sincere condolences.
My mother occasionally forgets who my sister is. My sister is the child who has been doing most of the caretaking.
Sometimes my mother has days when the Alzheimer’s isn’t so bad. And she realizes how she is when the disease IS bad, and she gets incredibly angry and frustrated. She knows that she should be in assisted living, or something more, but she resists all attempts to place her. And one day my father won’t catch her when she wanders out the door.
Lately, my wife and I have been making verbal faux pas like this regularly…either transposing consonants in phrases and coming up with gibberish, or like you, substituting one word for another.
The good news is we realize we’ve done it and crack up laughing. The bad news is we keep saying we’ve got to write all of these things down when they happen, but we never do, and thus forget them all.
The one we do remember came last fall when our daughter was in labor, about to give birth to our first grandchild. My wife had just talked to our son-in-law, and she passed on the information that our daughter’s “contraptions” were coming a couple of minutes apart!
My mother had dementia brought on by strokes, as did my oldest sister. So I have intimate personal experience, empathy, and sympathy with anyone dealing with it.
Now that that’s out of the way…
As long as we’re talking about it, does anyone else make it a point to make their brain work harder to keep it sharp? I’ve read that the seemingly simplest things can be very effective at keeping your brain in shape, most of which involve doing things in new ways, like brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand (doing ANYTHING with your non-dominant hand, actually), taking different routes to and from familiar locations, things like that.
I’m always looking for new ideas to try, especially simpler things. (Vs. learning a new language or how to play the piano). Any ideas?
Crossword puzzles. I’ve read somewhere that they are great for keeping the mind active. Something about the pattern recognition and not just knowlege of the answers stimulates certain areas.
I’m not going to offer a cite but if you Google ‘crossword puzzles Alzheimers’ you get a lot of hits.
Alzheimer’s runs in my father’s side of the family, and now that I’m in my mid-60s I’m especially on the lookout for aberrant behavior. So far nothing serious . . . just constantly forgetting names of things. I was telling someone about the flowers I’ve planted, and all I could remember were “pansies.” I could not think of the names of “petunias,” “marigolds,” “ageratum,” or “geraniums” . . . all of which are very common flowers.
I love crossword puzzles and would never tell someone not to do them, but the NIH recently did a survey of available research and evidence and concluded that there is “currently no evidence of even moderate scientific quality supporting the association of any modifiable factor—dietary supplement intake, use of prescription or non-prescription drugs, diet, exercise, and social engagement—with reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease.”
Your best bets for avoiding Alzheimer’s are to 1) not be born with a particular variant of a certain protein that seems to be strongly correlated with Alzheimer’s, and 2) not get old.
She’s still very active and very social just not to attentive to detail.