Memory Loss And Aging

A few months ago one of my daughters told me she was very worried about my memory loss and thought something was wrong. She did so with the force of her personality, which made it doubly distressing.  I was already concerned about the issue. Of course I know there’s a reason for her concern.  My mind has been a steel trap most of my life and hers, though I have been realizing the last few years that this was no longer the case.  I had talked with my doctor about it the year before and she had not seemed concerned.  This year I was already pretty distressed about the issue when I went to see her for my yearly physical; when she asked me to remember three random words and then began to talk about something else, I became quite distracted and didn’t even think about the words, so of course I couldn’t remember them all later one. Actually I could only recall one. Then the doc asked me to draw the time ‘2:30’ on a circle she drew on a piece of paper, and I became totally distraught.  I should say that this is a long-standing pattern for me when I am frightened: words swim, my brain ceases functioning; in a word: I freeze.  As soon as I left the doctor’s office I could see 2:30 on the clock in my head, returned, asked for  piece of paper, and easily drew it. By then my doc was concerned.  I was terrified.  The doc wanted me to see a neurologist who would give me a computer test of an hour to test my mental acuity, which I refused.  Obviously I don’t test well, and certainly wouldn’t in this mental state.  I threw up during my college boards and did poorly on them too.  Then the doc called me to suggest an on line test I could administer to myself, which I decided to try.  I could always just quit if I found it too stressful.  Instead, I got 100%.  As my partner kept assuring me during this entire ordeal, nothing was amiss.  Of course I also  googled the subject on line, and and discovered that memory loss is a normal part of aging. There are many other symptoms of both dementia and alzheimer’s, and I didn’t have any of them. My Dad had alzheimer’s, another reason for my daughter’s concern and my own. I keep telling myself I’m fine, just getting older. Still, I awaken in the morning with the worry that something is wrong, and I don’t understand why I j can’t just let this go? Someone suggested I join Lumosity online, which offers its members hundreds of brain games you can ‘play’ on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to tweak your memory, so I decided to try it.  I can’t say I like the ‘games’ much, but I’m doing fairly well with them, and also improving each week. I am choosing to ‘play’ three mornings a week, six or eight exercises at a time.  It only takes about fifteen minutes each time. The scores tell me I am improving. Some of the ‘games’ I hate, some are kind of interesting, and some are just ‘to be completed’.  The doc tells me it won’t make my memory loss go away, but it will slow down the process as the years progress.  Since I began to work with the Lumosity exercises, I have noticed that I am more able to remember things, or dredge them up more easily.  An example: my partner told me that we are leaving programs on our Mac open, even when we close out of them.  He showed me how to really ‘close’ them.  The next day I wasn’t sure I remembered how to do it, but he told me to think about it, with kindness. I felt annoyed, but I did think about it, and then I did remember. Before I began to play these brain games, I’m not sure that would have been the case.  I am writing about this because it is still disturbing to me, and because I imagine that those of you who read my blogs might be having this issue as well.  I suppose I should be grateful that I am in such good health, which I am.  But I sure don’t like this part of aging, and wish this change in my mental health wasn’t so troubling.  I suppose in time I’ll come to accept what is happening, which seems to be true with most changes that have occurred in my life.  I just hope it doesn’t take too long!