I can remember things from the 70s 80s and 90s better than I can more recent years. books films song lyrics etc.but nowadays I can not retain the same information in the same way.memory is indeed almost full
I have to take a shopping list when I go shopping. It’s the law now.
Names and titles, eg of films and books, tend to come and go. I can be halfway through a book and have no idea what it’s called.
A friend was round yesterday and asked for a cup of ‘that herbal tea you like so much’. Um…um…total blank. Peppermint? I tried. It obviously wasn’t the right answer, but she accepted it with good grace.
Then there’s strategic forgetting. I can forget to hang out the washing because I’m having too much fun doing something else. Cue much eye-rolling from Mrs thep who, she likes to remind me, is out at work all day. On the other hand I’m capable of remembering stuff she forgets, and she’s a mere whippersnapper. The whole thing’s a mystery.
It’s very peculiar and unsettling, for example, when I suddenly can’t remember the name of a person who I’ve known for several years. Same thing with LPs or films. I can clearly remember the album sleeve or maybe even the songs but the name temporarily eludes me.
Like Mike and his peppermint tea, one develops strategies to cope,
All credit to Bruce’s family who, at this difficult time, are using his illness to raise awareness of dementia.
I have to make a shopping list if there are more than four items needed – and it’s not unusual for me to arrive back home without one or two things that were clearly on the list…just somehow didn’t see them written down.
I’ve suffered from Mind Goes Blank In Shops since I first started going into them. I always write a list first.
This morning’s problem was that out of the 8 essentials on my list only 2 were in stock at Sainsbury’s.
#InAHandcart
A tip I’ve found is to count the number of items on your list before you go. It’s easier to remember a number & then If you had 10 on the list & only 4 in the basket, something’s wrong.
Doesn’t it get frustrating if you have 6 out of 8 items and can’t remember what the last 2 are? Anyway, I have an Excel spreadsheet of regular purchases on my phone and tick the items I need that shop, with one-offs added at the end.
I wish I could say I occasionally leave the house and then have to go back for something I’ve forgotten. But it’s not occasionally, it’s every single day without fail. I often think of an Absolutely Fabulous moment where Eddie (Jennifer Saunders) is leaving the house to go on holiday to France. “Have you got everything?” asks Patsy. “Yes, of course” she replies firmly, before leaving. Moments later she opens the front door again and rushes back in mumbling “car keys, passport, plane tickets” as she looks for them.
(Haven’t seen it for years – the scene might not be at all as I remember it.)
I have a book on memory, which I haven’t read yet, but I bought it on the basis of my dad having dementia and it being an interesting topic, for my own advancing years (mid-50s). ‘The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgett…’ by Lisa Genova.
I skipped to the end where it lists 16 tips for memory retention. If any aren’t apparent from the title, I can unpack them a bit, probably
1. Pay Attention
2. See it
3. Make it meaningful
4. Use your imagination
5. Location, location, location (Hello Kirsty!)
6. Make it about you (it’s always about me)
7. Look for the drama
8. Mix it up
9. Practice makes perfect
10. Use plenty of strong retrieval cues (borrow one from Hurricane Higgins)
11. Be positive
12. Externalize your memory
13. Context matters
14. Chill out
15. Get enough sleep
16. When trying to remember someone’s name, turn your Bakers INTO bakers (I am going to have to read this book)
That’s ironically a long list to remember. Apparently we can only keep up to 7 thoughts in our head before the first one slips off the end of the Degeneration Game conveyor belt.
My feeling is that we probably weren’t any better at remembering things than when we were kids. It its just we have a lot of stuff more to remember than before. I have a magpie adoration for new ideas and activities and so I compartmentalize everything. When somebody starts talking about a specific topic, I have to stop, borrow Hurricane Higgin’s nicotine-stained cue, insert an Oxford comma, and unpack that bit of my life.
That’s context. There’s a theory that when you go through a doorway, you enter a different headspace. (That’s true for me, because I think I am a spatial thinker – how a room looks reflects the state of my head). So go back to where you were when you started your mission (bottom of the stairs, on the couch wanting some munchies after a big spliff) and it might come back to you what you wanted – just by being in the space that triggered the thought. Then write it down.
I think the idea of a “full” memory has traction. There is only so much room. I have stopped worrying about forgetting the odd name of an obscure film or record. I just stop trying to remember, as that uses up battery life, and deliberately start thinking of something else. The missing name usually then pops up In a moment or two. Or I pretend to start looking it up, wiki, the BNF ( one for Tigger), wherever, and it is back in my head, often way before I even find the reference.
Over forty years ago, I knew the BNF off by heart. It was a lot smaller then, there was no internet and I needed the knowledge to pass exams. Nowadays, I can’t be bothered to learn all the new names for re-engineered inhalers, for example. It’s all there on my phone. In fact, I’m struggling to think of anything I care enough about to memorise.
My doctors have assured me that I am not at heightened risk of dementia despite the stupid number of concussions I’ve had.
Post-punch, my functioning memory is…let’s say sub-optimal. I carry a note pad everywhere with me and am constantly writing notes for myself. Groceries, even if it’s three items, have to be on the list. Not on the list? Don’t exist. I have laminated pieces of paper attached to the garage door – one’s a checklist for before I leave, the other is the “do you have…” list that every diabetic carries with themselves.
Longer term memory is fine. All the important things, like lyrics and Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries are all locked away.
Easily my most senior moment occurred pre-pandemic and I was so much older then I’m younger than that now. This is what occurred. I set out for my local supermarket to pick up some provisions, it’s situated roughly a ten minute walk away from my flat. When I arrived I went to get some cash from the ATM. That’s when I realised I’d forgotten my wallet so I returned to my flat with the intention of trying again in short order this time with my wallet. I arrived back at my flat where I admit I became a little distracted by a drawing I was working upon and even added a few lines to it before setting out once again to the supermarket and of course upon arrival I realised that I had forgotten my wallet for a second time. So I turned around and…
My wallet lives permanently in my l/h trouser pocket, so there’s little danger of me ever forgetting it – unless I change my strides and forget to transfer it of course. Or forget to put my trousers on before I go out – hasn’t happened yet, but there’s still time.
No way! Pockets are not your friends. They will lull you into a false sense of security, then let you down when you are least prepared. A gentleman’s handbag is an essential!
@gary, I’ve been puzzling over this for 3 days. What terrible thing happened to you to make you distrust pockets so much? I regard them as my friends, particularly when wearing cargo pants with their wealth of pockets. They hold wallet, hanky, phone, coins, keys, mask – and yes, shopping lists. I never leave the house without patting myself down. Pencil has put his painty finger on the problem with manbags – they’re separate items, like umbrellas, and can easily be forgotten or left on the bus.
Two big problems with pockets:
1. Overcrowding
2. Slippage
“Cargo pants” sound like they provide adequate storage facilities. However, I wear mostly tracksuit bottoms (“sweatpants” in current vernacular, I believe, though I don’t know why) during the winter and below-the-knee length shorts during the summer months. Storage is limited, any additional weight is cumbersome to my groinular agility and items falling out is a constant worry. Since acquiring a gentleman’s handbag several years ago, I’ve trained myself (well, almost – be quicker to train a monkey, quite frankly) to put everything -ie. wallet, keys, phone- immediately back in it after use and never let it go astray. Nothing gets lost, everyone’s happy.
(Any time I carry an umbrella it gets left on the train -every time without fail- because it won’t fit inside my gentleman’s handbag.)
Men’s handbags are an essential of my sartorial elegance. Why, oft I am walking through the village when a young maiden shouts “What’s that so nonchalantly flung over your shoulder?”
I’ve trained my brain over many years to ensure that I never step outside my abode without wallet, keys and phone about my person. Even if I’m only emptying the bins.
Have been known to forget to put my specs on and only realise when I’m about to start the car.
I once drove all the way from Watford to Putney to see a band, only to realise when I got to the Half Moon that the gig was in fact at The Borderline, in the West End. Had my ticket in my pocket, with the name of the venue clearly printed on it.
I too, religiously since when recently putting the bin bags out, the front the door closed. I had to gingerly walk in socks, joggings and t shirt to the local and borrow a phone to call the only number I know: my ex wife. She called my son who ubered his keys to the pub, eventually. The landlord started me tab. Thank goodness for folk.
A good point: I don’t know my wife’s mobile number as I always use the phone memory/favourites. Without my own phone, I’d be lost. Incidentally, I used to be able to remember a 15 digit PIN for a company phone card but anything post 1995, I’m lost.
I can reel off my mobile telephone number which I find impressive as I maybe turn it on once a month to see if there are any important messages, there rarely are. Turned it on this week and found a message to contact the doctors surgery.
Actually yes they had, as discovered when I inadvisedly stayed for a lock in last year. 3am before I could politely extricate myself from the smokey bar.
I don’t think our brains get full…we take so much in at all times, it’s quite astonishing. Even when we’re asleep it’s whirring away, making up entire alternative realities that seem to last for years. Apparently that part of sleep only lasts a few seconds. There was that famous American band, The Snorers, whose name comes from that part of sleep. Then you wake up and you’re back to the day to day admin of life and the brain clocks on in a more useful way.
My best friend died last Easter from pneumonia brought on by the advancing effects of exactly this same dementia. It was truly horrible to watch. The onset was so quick and, in the first few weeks, almost impossible to spot – he left his phone on the roof of his car and drove off. A kind passer-by handed it into the supermarket and T got it back.
Tony had always been absent minded but, when it came to humour, he was the sharpest knife in the drawer. Relentlessly funny, kind, warm, passionate, quick to tears, steeped in music, sport – in terms of Afterworders will understand, he was ‘one of us.’
Which is probably why I loved him so much.
Within a few months he wasn’t safe to drive and hated being driven. His gorgeous wife was driving him home from a visit to mutual friends when he tried to get out of the car, on the M3, at 70mph. He became violent with her, at home and, after forty years working in care, she knew it was time. She called in an expert and Tony was sectioned.
He spent months in a secure unit in Reading – horrible, horrible place, like a jail, but with wonderful nurses – until a care-home would take him. By the end, he was on the highest level of medication he could be, but he was comfortable, in a room with windows, and his family around him. The whole thing, from forgetting his phone was on the roof of the car, to death, was two years.
It’s a cliche but I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
I work in community transport. One of the things we do is supply minibus and driver to a local dementia day centre. If the driver is off I’ll often stand in. The ex Coldstream Guard who went into HGV driving around Europe we take must have been a man of great stature in his day. At 88 with dementia he shuffles on and of the bus a frightened shell of what he used to be with his spare pads (don’t call them nappies Dave) in his bag. It’s so sad. However its his 88 year old wife / carer who breaks me. She looks beyond exhausted yet remains stoically upbeat. She almost hugged me yesterday as we took her husband away for 6 hours respite. Dropping him off later felt like a betrayal. I’ve got another 100 stories to tell just the same. I’ll leave hospitals, social care etc for now….
What does this mean for me? I want a dignified way out before my partner has to change my pad if fate decides that’s what it has in store for me. She is younger than me and the thought of her having to deal with the things we see every day is terrifying, more so than if I go down that route. I’ll not have a clue what’s going on anyway.
Dementia is so cruel to those that suffer it. To those left to care it’s torture and we should be given a choice about when enough is enough.
I seem incapable of recalling names now. Even of people that I deal with regularly. I will routinely sit looking at a blank email squeezing as hard as I can to recall the fragment of a name of someone I will have had contact with no more than a week ago.
I have an Echo Dot with a clock that I use as an alarm clock. To turn the alarm off you just use the usual key word to give the “off” instruction. Unless of course, as happened last week, you can’t remember it in which case you have to unplug the bastard thing from the wall to shut it up.
I thought I was suffering from premature memory loss for the last year or so (I’m about to turn 53). After a blood test, it turned out I was anaemic with ‘bonus’ pernicious anaemia (B12 deficiency). A couple of weeks ago I had an iron infusion and started wearing B12 skin patches and I’m remembering a lot more already. The pins & needles haven’t gone away yet though, sadly.
So (broken record time again) men: go and see a GP.
Yep, that was me a few years ago, until I took a blood test and was put on a daily dose of B12. Apparently, when you take Metformin (for Diabetes) for x number of years, that will happen.
I noticed a remarkable change after a week too, and could go back to solving crosswords again – I’d stopped because they made me feel stupid when I just couldn’t remember any words or facts that I knew I had always known before.
Thanks for this advice. Have some in my multivits but along with Vit D (I work indoors …) have now ordered Vit B 12 tablets. If I remember to renew in 3 months time I guess they could be working.
Oral B12 not well absorbed if you have true autoimmune Pernicious Anaemia. Should work for metformin related or dietary related. @fentonsteve, I confess I haven’t heard of transdermal. Should work as well as the more usual injectable option.
Indeed. Inefficient guts mean the B multivits and Ferrous Fumarate tablets I’ve been taking for a decade were passing through without notable effect. LOFFLEX diet means I have no dietary source.
The B12 patches are an experiment – my B12 level was 312, just above the 300 min limit (requiring injection). Folic acid in them, too.
My colleague of 20 something years has always been a lot brighter than me, despite being 7 or 8 years younger. He now has to refer much more to written notes and says it has been since Covid whereas I think it’s mainly an age thing. For reference, we are 58 and 51. Hopefully, I’ve bottomed out on my memory ability, having got used to writing everything down years ago.
My late father spent the last few years of his life in a care home, one with outstanding staff, due to Alzheimer’s dementia before Covid pneumonia put and end to him last year. By all accounts he was perfectly content, and enjoyed being looked after and having no responsibilities.
My sister and her husband went to visit him there (not that he knew who they were, but he was happy to be in company paying attention to him) and he pointed at a women who was plainly another resident – shuffling by in a dressing gown worn over a t shirt and trackie-trousers.
‘Do you know who that is?’
‘Ah … no. Who is it?’
‘That’s Ken Dodd!’
[gently] ‘I don’t think it can be. I think I read that Ken Dodd died.’
‘That’s what he wanted you to think! Hello Ken!’ [she waves] ‘See!’
Dementia is a horrific illness and, as said above, I wouldn’t wish it on Nigel Farage.
My mum was halfway through her OU PhD when she got the diagnosis. A voracious reader, within a few months she couldn’t read or write. A lot of people with dementia retreat to a time of childhood, which is fine if you had a good childhood but less so if your father was a violent, alcoholic bully. Mum lived in fear of her parents ‘coming back’, even though they’d both been dead for over forty years.
One of the worst things was the erosion of time awareness. Without a strict routine, or even with one, mum would wake at 3am and start rifling through her wardrobe as she was ‘driving home’. By the end, my dad was on about three hours sleep a night. We thought a giant tumour would be the end of my mother, but after a lengthy operation she recovered physically. – but not mentally. That last year was partially grim. My sister and I would be down every weekend, but my dad was stoically falling apart. Mum was mostly bewildered, violent and suicidal, though there were rare shafts of light. I once took her to the garden to calm her down, and she asked who had planted all these wonderful things. You did, I said. This is your garden. She cried tears of joy – It’s so beautiful, she said.
Towards the end, she went into respite for a week or so after a fall. How long has she had this, they asked dad. About five years, he said. Turns out, most people snap at six months, came the reply. But the sad truth was the care homes in the New Romney area were pretty grim – airless waiting rooms smelling of piss said dad, and he was right.
When she went just after that Christmas (a very good one), no one cried. The funeral was bright and cathartic. Dad had to go though lockdown on his own, but then met a woman who had recently lost her husband to MND. They are both very happy and campaign for assisted dying.
Very sorry to hear all that, TrypF. It’s an absolute bastard of a disease. My grandmother’s funeral was similar; no one cried that day because we knew we’d lost most of her long ago, and that she was better off at peace than confused and afraid in a place no one could really reach.
Glad your father has been able to find some happiness at the tail end of things.
My Mum died last year, age 98. No sadness for me and my brother, Mum had left us over 10 years ago.
At first, just the normal forgetting keys, worrying where her purse was etc etc. Things got steadily worse so eventually she moved in with my brother and his wife. That lasted just over a year before it became clear she needed proper professional care.
The Home was a good one, full of caring and professional staff. Mum joined in the daily activities, keep fit exercises sitting on a chair, day trips to the local garden centre etc.
Things, however, got steadily worse and she now barely recognised her family. She was then moved upstairs to a truly terrifying sealed unit where brain-dead zombies walked to and fro.
She was there for four years and visits to her virtually stopped – it was just too damn painful.
Before her funeral we found a letter she had written to her sons on 1st January 2000. Poignant and heartbreakingly beautiful, the letter ended with her saying “I am so proud of my sons, no mother could ask for more.”
It was only then we cried.
My Mum succumbed to Alzheimer’s in 2004. In a moment of lucidity before the disease took full hold of her she said that she hoped she had always been a good mother to me. I was too choked to reply then, and never said half the things I should have said before it was too late.
Bloody hell. I so glad I hadn’t seen my father for decades before he died. If he had asked something similar, not that I think the question would have occurred to him, I really don’t what possible kind answer I could have given.
With my dad’s dementia, there are many things that I sometimes think it might have been good to have shared with him when he was more lucid, meaningful father-son connective conversations, that sort of thing. But realistically, that was never going to ever have happened. We never had the sort of discursive communicative connection that I have with my mum.
That’s not to say I don’t feel an enormous bond with my dad. It’s just that it is/was/has been expressed through non-vocal means. I feel a shared contentment of association with him from decades of accompanying him in countless activities, from learning from his positive aspect, his optimistic outlook, his curiosity about life and eagerness to connect with other people just by his manner of being, his facility with experimentation and joy in being. I have realized that this unspoken expression of life energy does not need documentation in words. There is, for me, a common understanding that suffuses our relationship, even through the unrelenting dimming of his consciousness. The spirit is ever-present.
I can imagine that you and your mother both knew the answer to her question, even if it was not articulated. These things are deep within us.
Same with my mother. At our last visit, we all gave ourselves some time alone with her so we could say those things. I just sat there looking at her for.. a while, I guess.
I had an uncle who, in his early sixties, had early onset dementia. His adult life was miserable; his daughter died when she was about 9, it destroyed his marriage and after that, he lived, in a caravan, in a relationship with a man, ostracised by most of his family and community. I did not know he existed till the dementia kicked in and he showed up at my granny’s house seeking help.
His dementia removed him back to a simpler time. He laughed a lot. He knew, for a while, that he had dementia, and was fine with that. I have seen so many people go the opposite way. Obviously before it rendered him silent.
But your point about dementia taking you to your childhood hit home. His childhood was probably his last happy time.
My wife will sometimes say to me, when she is reading information in one media location and needs to use it in another, “Can you remember this number for me?” And I’ll go, “Of course.” And she’ll say “462”. And I’ll go, “Really?”
My wife is in her forties, her memory for names and details is not great and she constantly gets words wrong. Tonight I suggested we watch Mary Beard interview Clive James and she retorted that she’s sick of the sight of “Mary J Blige.”
BrilliantMistake says
I’m certainly getting senior moments a bit more often with regards words and names. Google helps. As the Macca LP title said ‘memory almost full’.
Johnb says
I can remember things from the 70s 80s and 90s better than I can more recent years. books films song lyrics etc.but nowadays I can not retain the same information in the same way.memory is indeed almost full
mikethep says
I have to take a shopping list when I go shopping. It’s the law now.
Names and titles, eg of films and books, tend to come and go. I can be halfway through a book and have no idea what it’s called.
A friend was round yesterday and asked for a cup of ‘that herbal tea you like so much’. Um…um…total blank. Peppermint? I tried. It obviously wasn’t the right answer, but she accepted it with good grace.
Then there’s strategic forgetting. I can forget to hang out the washing because I’m having too much fun doing something else. Cue much eye-rolling from Mrs thep who, she likes to remind me, is out at work all day. On the other hand I’m capable of remembering stuff she forgets, and she’s a mere whippersnapper. The whole thing’s a mystery.
Kaisfatdad says
I recognise a lot of that, @Mikethep.
It’s very peculiar and unsettling, for example, when I suddenly can’t remember the name of a person who I’ve known for several years. Same thing with LPs or films. I can clearly remember the album sleeve or maybe even the songs but the name temporarily eludes me.
Like Mike and his peppermint tea, one develops strategies to cope,
All credit to Bruce’s family who, at this difficult time, are using his illness to raise awareness of dementia.
https://variety.com/2023/film/news/bruce-willis-dementia-aphasia-retire-1235525599/
salwarpe says
That’s a great article – especially the message from his daughter.
Sniffity says
I have to make a shopping list if there are more than four items needed – and it’s not unusual for me to arrive back home without one or two things that were clearly on the list…just somehow didn’t see them written down.
Mike_H says
I’ve suffered from Mind Goes Blank In Shops since I first started going into them. I always write a list first.
This morning’s problem was that out of the 8 essentials on my list only 2 were in stock at Sainsbury’s.
#InAHandcart
Timbar says
A tip I’ve found is to count the number of items on your list before you go. It’s easier to remember a number & then If you had 10 on the list & only 4 in the basket, something’s wrong.
davebigpicture says
Agreed, I’ve done this for a long time.
Gatz says
Doesn’t it get frustrating if you have 6 out of 8 items and can’t remember what the last 2 are? Anyway, I have an Excel spreadsheet of regular purchases on my phone and tick the items I need that shop, with one-offs added at the end.
davebigpicture says
A fair point but I’d probably only do this for 4 or 5 items. I do this at work too for small jobs.
Sniffity says
Easy to do – thanks for that!
Gary says
I wish I could say I occasionally leave the house and then have to go back for something I’ve forgotten. But it’s not occasionally, it’s every single day without fail. I often think of an Absolutely Fabulous moment where Eddie (Jennifer Saunders) is leaving the house to go on holiday to France. “Have you got everything?” asks Patsy. “Yes, of course” she replies firmly, before leaving. Moments later she opens the front door again and rushes back in mumbling “car keys, passport, plane tickets” as she looks for them.
(Haven’t seen it for years – the scene might not be at all as I remember it.)
Jaygee says
Classic CRAFT moment…
Gary says
CRAFT?
thecheshirecat says
Can’t Remember A Thing
Jaygee says
WTF
salwarpe says
Can’t Remember A ‘Flowery’ Thing.
I have a book on memory, which I haven’t read yet, but I bought it on the basis of my dad having dementia and it being an interesting topic, for my own advancing years (mid-50s). ‘The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgett…’ by Lisa Genova.
I skipped to the end where it lists 16 tips for memory retention. If any aren’t apparent from the title, I can unpack them a bit, probably
1. Pay Attention
2. See it
3. Make it meaningful
4. Use your imagination
5. Location, location, location (Hello Kirsty!)
6. Make it about you (it’s always about me)
7. Look for the drama
8. Mix it up
9. Practice makes perfect
10. Use plenty of strong retrieval cues (borrow one from Hurricane Higgins)
11. Be positive
12. Externalize your memory
13. Context matters
14. Chill out
15. Get enough sleep
16. When trying to remember someone’s name, turn your Bakers INTO bakers (I am going to have to read this book)
That’s ironically a long list to remember. Apparently we can only keep up to 7 thoughts in our head before the first one slips off the end of the Degeneration Game conveyor belt.
My feeling is that we probably weren’t any better at remembering things than when we were kids. It its just we have a lot of stuff more to remember than before. I have a magpie adoration for new ideas and activities and so I compartmentalize everything. When somebody starts talking about a specific topic, I have to stop, borrow Hurricane Higgin’s nicotine-stained cue, insert an Oxford comma, and unpack that bit of my life.
Don’t be too hard on yourself, Afterworders!
Lodestone of Wrongness says
Ah, standing at the top of the stairs wondering what I’m up here for…
Standing in front of an open fridge playing the “what am I looking for?” game..
salwarpe says
That’s context. There’s a theory that when you go through a doorway, you enter a different headspace. (That’s true for me, because I think I am a spatial thinker – how a room looks reflects the state of my head). So go back to where you were when you started your mission (bottom of the stairs, on the couch wanting some munchies after a big spliff) and it might come back to you what you wanted – just by being in the space that triggered the thought. Then write it down.
retropath2 says
I think the idea of a “full” memory has traction. There is only so much room. I have stopped worrying about forgetting the odd name of an obscure film or record. I just stop trying to remember, as that uses up battery life, and deliberately start thinking of something else. The missing name usually then pops up In a moment or two. Or I pretend to start looking it up, wiki, the BNF ( one for Tigger), wherever, and it is back in my head, often way before I even find the reference.
fortuneight says
I’ve always thought memory was like a hard drive. It gets full, new files overwrite the old ones, and it needs a regular de-fragmentation.
Moose the Mooche says
Given what’s on my drive, that’s a pretty good analogy.
Tiggerlion says
Over forty years ago, I knew the BNF off by heart. It was a lot smaller then, there was no internet and I needed the knowledge to pass exams. Nowadays, I can’t be bothered to learn all the new names for re-engineered inhalers, for example. It’s all there on my phone. In fact, I’m struggling to think of anything I care enough about to memorise.
bigstevie says
How are the piano lessons going?
Tiggerlion says
Not good. Lockdown brought it to a halt and I have restarted.
Sitheref2409 says
My doctors have assured me that I am not at heightened risk of dementia despite the stupid number of concussions I’ve had.
Post-punch, my functioning memory is…let’s say sub-optimal. I carry a note pad everywhere with me and am constantly writing notes for myself. Groceries, even if it’s three items, have to be on the list. Not on the list? Don’t exist. I have laminated pieces of paper attached to the garage door – one’s a checklist for before I leave, the other is the “do you have…” list that every diabetic carries with themselves.
Longer term memory is fine. All the important things, like lyrics and Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries are all locked away.
pencilsqueezer says
Easily my most senior moment occurred pre-pandemic and I was so much older then I’m younger than that now. This is what occurred. I set out for my local supermarket to pick up some provisions, it’s situated roughly a ten minute walk away from my flat. When I arrived I went to get some cash from the ATM. That’s when I realised I’d forgotten my wallet so I returned to my flat with the intention of trying again in short order this time with my wallet. I arrived back at my flat where I admit I became a little distracted by a drawing I was working upon and even added a few lines to it before setting out once again to the supermarket and of course upon arrival I realised that I had forgotten my wallet for a second time. So I turned around and…
mikethep says
My wallet lives permanently in my l/h trouser pocket, so there’s little danger of me ever forgetting it – unless I change my strides and forget to transfer it of course. Or forget to put my trousers on before I go out – hasn’t happened yet, but there’s still time.
Gary says
No way! Pockets are not your friends. They will lull you into a false sense of security, then let you down when you are least prepared. A gentleman’s handbag is an essential!
pencilsqueezer says
I’d just forget the handbag instead.
Tiggerlion says
Recently, I forgot the PIN I’d been using for years. Of course, I remembered it the instant the machine ate my card. Took me a week to get a new one.
pencilsqueezer says
Why don’t you give us your card number and your PIN and we can try to remember them for you?
Tiggerlion says
Ok . 4052 631…er…..
Nope. It’s gone again
mikethep says
@gary, I’ve been puzzling over this for 3 days. What terrible thing happened to you to make you distrust pockets so much? I regard them as my friends, particularly when wearing cargo pants with their wealth of pockets. They hold wallet, hanky, phone, coins, keys, mask – and yes, shopping lists. I never leave the house without patting myself down. Pencil has put his painty finger on the problem with manbags – they’re separate items, like umbrellas, and can easily be forgotten or left on the bus.
Gary says
Two big problems with pockets:
1. Overcrowding
2. Slippage
“Cargo pants” sound like they provide adequate storage facilities. However, I wear mostly tracksuit bottoms (“sweatpants” in current vernacular, I believe, though I don’t know why) during the winter and below-the-knee length shorts during the summer months. Storage is limited, any additional weight is cumbersome to my groinular agility and items falling out is a constant worry. Since acquiring a gentleman’s handbag several years ago, I’ve trained myself (well, almost – be quicker to train a monkey, quite frankly) to put everything -ie. wallet, keys, phone- immediately back in it after use and never let it go astray. Nothing gets lost, everyone’s happy.
(Any time I carry an umbrella it gets left on the train -every time without fail- because it won’t fit inside my gentleman’s handbag.)
mikethep says
Fair enough. Tracksuit bottoms are called tracky dacks in Oz, you won’t be surprised to hear.
Moose the Mooche says
I am surprised they’re not called tracky dackies.
Gary says
“I never leave the house without patting myself down.”
@moose-the-mooche – same with you?
Lodestone of Wrongness says
Men’s handbags are an essential of my sartorial elegance. Why, oft I am walking through the village when a young maiden shouts “What’s that so nonchalantly flung over your shoulder?”
Moose the Mooche says
“‘Tis naught but a ceremonial stoat my dear. Say hello to the nice lady, Mister Nippy?”
hubert rawlinson says
This may or may not help.
Bingo Little says
God, I love that movie.
Mike_H says
I’ve trained my brain over many years to ensure that I never step outside my abode without wallet, keys and phone about my person. Even if I’m only emptying the bins.
Have been known to forget to put my specs on and only realise when I’m about to start the car.
I once drove all the way from Watford to Putney to see a band, only to realise when I got to the Half Moon that the gig was in fact at The Borderline, in the West End. Had my ticket in my pocket, with the name of the venue clearly printed on it.
dai says
I find if I need more than about 5 things with me then I start to struggle.
So phone, house keys, car keys, wallet, passport would probably be ok, add reading glasses or something and I will forget one of them.
Of course when I was about 18 I only generally needed 2 things or even 1. Some cash and (maybe) keys
BrilliantMistake says
I too, religiously since when recently putting the bin bags out, the front the door closed. I had to gingerly walk in socks, joggings and t shirt to the local and borrow a phone to call the only number I know: my ex wife. She called my son who ubered his keys to the pub, eventually. The landlord started me tab. Thank goodness for folk.
davebigpicture says
A good point: I don’t know my wife’s mobile number as I always use the phone memory/favourites. Without my own phone, I’d be lost. Incidentally, I used to be able to remember a 15 digit PIN for a company phone card but anything post 1995, I’m lost.
Mike_H says
I can still reel off, unaided, my bank card number, expiry date and security code when buying stuff online, so all is not quite lost yet.
salwarpe says
Go on, then! Seeing is believing.
Mike_H says
XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XX/XX XXX
Don’t spend it all in the same place!
hubert rawlinson says
I can reel off my mobile telephone number which I find impressive as I maybe turn it on once a month to see if there are any important messages, there rarely are. Turned it on this week and found a message to contact the doctors surgery.
Mike_H says
They’ve found a compatible brain donor!
BryanD says
‘The landlord started me tab’
Had they forgotten smoking is banned in pubs…
BrilliantMistake says
Actually yes they had, as discovered when I inadvisedly stayed for a lock in last year. 3am before I could politely extricate myself from the smokey bar.
Black Celebration says
I don’t think our brains get full…we take so much in at all times, it’s quite astonishing. Even when we’re asleep it’s whirring away, making up entire alternative realities that seem to last for years. Apparently that part of sleep only lasts a few seconds. There was that famous American band, The Snorers, whose name comes from that part of sleep. Then you wake up and you’re back to the day to day admin of life and the brain clocks on in a more useful way.
niallb says
My best friend died last Easter from pneumonia brought on by the advancing effects of exactly this same dementia. It was truly horrible to watch. The onset was so quick and, in the first few weeks, almost impossible to spot – he left his phone on the roof of his car and drove off. A kind passer-by handed it into the supermarket and T got it back.
Tony had always been absent minded but, when it came to humour, he was the sharpest knife in the drawer. Relentlessly funny, kind, warm, passionate, quick to tears, steeped in music, sport – in terms of Afterworders will understand, he was ‘one of us.’
Which is probably why I loved him so much.
Within a few months he wasn’t safe to drive and hated being driven. His gorgeous wife was driving him home from a visit to mutual friends when he tried to get out of the car, on the M3, at 70mph. He became violent with her, at home and, after forty years working in care, she knew it was time. She called in an expert and Tony was sectioned.
He spent months in a secure unit in Reading – horrible, horrible place, like a jail, but with wonderful nurses – until a care-home would take him. By the end, he was on the highest level of medication he could be, but he was comfortable, in a room with windows, and his family around him. The whole thing, from forgetting his phone was on the roof of the car, to death, was two years.
It’s a cliche but I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
Dave Ross says
I work in community transport. One of the things we do is supply minibus and driver to a local dementia day centre. If the driver is off I’ll often stand in. The ex Coldstream Guard who went into HGV driving around Europe we take must have been a man of great stature in his day. At 88 with dementia he shuffles on and of the bus a frightened shell of what he used to be with his spare pads (don’t call them nappies Dave) in his bag. It’s so sad. However its his 88 year old wife / carer who breaks me. She looks beyond exhausted yet remains stoically upbeat. She almost hugged me yesterday as we took her husband away for 6 hours respite. Dropping him off later felt like a betrayal. I’ve got another 100 stories to tell just the same. I’ll leave hospitals, social care etc for now….
What does this mean for me? I want a dignified way out before my partner has to change my pad if fate decides that’s what it has in store for me. She is younger than me and the thought of her having to deal with the things we see every day is terrifying, more so than if I go down that route. I’ll not have a clue what’s going on anyway.
Dementia is so cruel to those that suffer it. To those left to care it’s torture and we should be given a choice about when enough is enough.
fortuneight says
I seem incapable of recalling names now. Even of people that I deal with regularly. I will routinely sit looking at a blank email squeezing as hard as I can to recall the fragment of a name of someone I will have had contact with no more than a week ago.
I have an Echo Dot with a clock that I use as an alarm clock. To turn the alarm off you just use the usual key word to give the “off” instruction. Unless of course, as happened last week, you can’t remember it in which case you have to unplug the bastard thing from the wall to shut it up.
fentonsteve says
I thought I was suffering from premature memory loss for the last year or so (I’m about to turn 53). After a blood test, it turned out I was anaemic with ‘bonus’ pernicious anaemia (B12 deficiency). A couple of weeks ago I had an iron infusion and started wearing B12 skin patches and I’m remembering a lot more already. The pins & needles haven’t gone away yet though, sadly.
So (broken record time again) men: go and see a GP.
Locust says
Yep, that was me a few years ago, until I took a blood test and was put on a daily dose of B12. Apparently, when you take Metformin (for Diabetes) for x number of years, that will happen.
I noticed a remarkable change after a week too, and could go back to solving crosswords again – I’d stopped because they made me feel stupid when I just couldn’t remember any words or facts that I knew I had always known before.
BrilliantMistake says
Thanks for this advice. Have some in my multivits but along with Vit D (I work indoors …) have now ordered Vit B 12 tablets. If I remember to renew in 3 months time I guess they could be working.
retropath2 says
Oral B12 not well absorbed if you have true autoimmune Pernicious Anaemia. Should work for metformin related or dietary related. @fentonsteve, I confess I haven’t heard of transdermal. Should work as well as the more usual injectable option.
fentonsteve says
Indeed. Inefficient guts mean the B multivits and Ferrous Fumarate tablets I’ve been taking for a decade were passing through without notable effect. LOFFLEX diet means I have no dietary source.
The B12 patches are an experiment – my B12 level was 312, just above the 300 min limit (requiring injection). Folic acid in them, too.
Bloods are due in April, I will report back.
davebigpicture says
My colleague of 20 something years has always been a lot brighter than me, despite being 7 or 8 years younger. He now has to refer much more to written notes and says it has been since Covid whereas I think it’s mainly an age thing. For reference, we are 58 and 51. Hopefully, I’ve bottomed out on my memory ability, having got used to writing everything down years ago.
Gatz says
My late father spent the last few years of his life in a care home, one with outstanding staff, due to Alzheimer’s dementia before Covid pneumonia put and end to him last year. By all accounts he was perfectly content, and enjoyed being looked after and having no responsibilities.
My sister and her husband went to visit him there (not that he knew who they were, but he was happy to be in company paying attention to him) and he pointed at a women who was plainly another resident – shuffling by in a dressing gown worn over a t shirt and trackie-trousers.
‘Do you know who that is?’
‘Ah … no. Who is it?’
‘That’s Ken Dodd!’
[gently] ‘I don’t think it can be. I think I read that Ken Dodd died.’
‘That’s what he wanted you to think! Hello Ken!’ [she waves] ‘See!’
TrypF says
Dementia is a horrific illness and, as said above, I wouldn’t wish it on Nigel Farage.
My mum was halfway through her OU PhD when she got the diagnosis. A voracious reader, within a few months she couldn’t read or write. A lot of people with dementia retreat to a time of childhood, which is fine if you had a good childhood but less so if your father was a violent, alcoholic bully. Mum lived in fear of her parents ‘coming back’, even though they’d both been dead for over forty years.
One of the worst things was the erosion of time awareness. Without a strict routine, or even with one, mum would wake at 3am and start rifling through her wardrobe as she was ‘driving home’. By the end, my dad was on about three hours sleep a night. We thought a giant tumour would be the end of my mother, but after a lengthy operation she recovered physically. – but not mentally. That last year was partially grim. My sister and I would be down every weekend, but my dad was stoically falling apart. Mum was mostly bewildered, violent and suicidal, though there were rare shafts of light. I once took her to the garden to calm her down, and she asked who had planted all these wonderful things. You did, I said. This is your garden. She cried tears of joy – It’s so beautiful, she said.
Towards the end, she went into respite for a week or so after a fall. How long has she had this, they asked dad. About five years, he said. Turns out, most people snap at six months, came the reply. But the sad truth was the care homes in the New Romney area were pretty grim – airless waiting rooms smelling of piss said dad, and he was right.
When she went just after that Christmas (a very good one), no one cried. The funeral was bright and cathartic. Dad had to go though lockdown on his own, but then met a woman who had recently lost her husband to MND. They are both very happy and campaign for assisted dying.
Dave Ross says
I’m so glad your Dad is OK. They have my full support for their campaign…
mikethep says
Well, if it was a choice between Farage getting it or me, I’d vote for Farage every time.
Bingo Little says
Very sorry to hear all that, TrypF. It’s an absolute bastard of a disease. My grandmother’s funeral was similar; no one cried that day because we knew we’d lost most of her long ago, and that she was better off at peace than confused and afraid in a place no one could really reach.
Glad your father has been able to find some happiness at the tail end of things.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
My Mum died last year, age 98. No sadness for me and my brother, Mum had left us over 10 years ago.
At first, just the normal forgetting keys, worrying where her purse was etc etc. Things got steadily worse so eventually she moved in with my brother and his wife. That lasted just over a year before it became clear she needed proper professional care.
The Home was a good one, full of caring and professional staff. Mum joined in the daily activities, keep fit exercises sitting on a chair, day trips to the local garden centre etc.
Things, however, got steadily worse and she now barely recognised her family. She was then moved upstairs to a truly terrifying sealed unit where brain-dead zombies walked to and fro.
She was there for four years and visits to her virtually stopped – it was just too damn painful.
Before her funeral we found a letter she had written to her sons on 1st January 2000. Poignant and heartbreakingly beautiful, the letter ended with her saying “I am so proud of my sons, no mother could ask for more.”
It was only then we cried.
Jaygee says
Lovely story, Lodey. What a beautiful memory to be left
Lodestone of Wrongness says
Appreciated…
Boneshaker says
My Mum succumbed to Alzheimer’s in 2004. In a moment of lucidity before the disease took full hold of her she said that she hoped she had always been a good mother to me. I was too choked to reply then, and never said half the things I should have said before it was too late.
Gatz says
Bloody hell. I so glad I hadn’t seen my father for decades before he died. If he had asked something similar, not that I think the question would have occurred to him, I really don’t what possible kind answer I could have given.
salwarpe says
With my dad’s dementia, there are many things that I sometimes think it might have been good to have shared with him when he was more lucid, meaningful father-son connective conversations, that sort of thing. But realistically, that was never going to ever have happened. We never had the sort of discursive communicative connection that I have with my mum.
That’s not to say I don’t feel an enormous bond with my dad. It’s just that it is/was/has been expressed through non-vocal means. I feel a shared contentment of association with him from decades of accompanying him in countless activities, from learning from his positive aspect, his optimistic outlook, his curiosity about life and eagerness to connect with other people just by his manner of being, his facility with experimentation and joy in being. I have realized that this unspoken expression of life energy does not need documentation in words. There is, for me, a common understanding that suffuses our relationship, even through the unrelenting dimming of his consciousness. The spirit is ever-present.
I can imagine that you and your mother both knew the answer to her question, even if it was not articulated. These things are deep within us.
MC Escher says
Same with my mother. At our last visit, we all gave ourselves some time alone with her so we could say those things. I just sat there looking at her for.. a while, I guess.
She knew, mate. Don’t worry, she knew.
Bingo Little says
Oof – you’ve just almost set me off. Too early in the week to be reading things like this.
Twang says
I had a moment reading that story Tryp. I’m glad to u have some sort of closure.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
I think I’m saying thank you….
TrypF says
Cheers Twang. It’s good to have this forum to share our stories.
ganglesprocket says
I had an uncle who, in his early sixties, had early onset dementia. His adult life was miserable; his daughter died when she was about 9, it destroyed his marriage and after that, he lived, in a caravan, in a relationship with a man, ostracised by most of his family and community. I did not know he existed till the dementia kicked in and he showed up at my granny’s house seeking help.
His dementia removed him back to a simpler time. He laughed a lot. He knew, for a while, that he had dementia, and was fine with that. I have seen so many people go the opposite way. Obviously before it rendered him silent.
But your point about dementia taking you to your childhood hit home. His childhood was probably his last happy time.
madfox says
My wife will sometimes say to me, when she is reading information in one media location and needs to use it in another, “Can you remember this number for me?” And I’ll go, “Of course.” And she’ll say “462”. And I’ll go, “Really?”
ganglesprocket says
My wife is in her forties, her memory for names and details is not great and she constantly gets words wrong. Tonight I suggested we watch Mary Beard interview Clive James and she retorted that she’s sick of the sight of “Mary J Blige.”
She is genuinely terrified sometimes.