Enjoying a craft is lifelong.
Source: Photo by Age Cymru on Unsplash
Having lost my elderly parents and in-laws to dementia, I was surprised to learn that a very good friend of mine in her late 60s is dealing with the beginnings of memory loss, and yet she isn’t discouraged. She’s smart; she’s aware of the future that may await her; and she’s managing to take life’s potential calamities in stride. She’s not the only one.
A new book by Zaldy Tan, M.D., the Director of the Memory & Healthy Aging Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, discusses precisely that type of resilience in his new book, What to Remember When You Are Forgetting: How to Live with Memory Loss, Alzheimer’s, and Other Dementias.
I also came across a few surprises in the 8th edition of The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for People with Alzheimer Disease, Other Dementias, and Memory Loss by Nancy L. Mace and Peter V. Rabins. You’ll appreciate these authors’ approach if you’re seeking an encyclopedic set of facts, especially if you’re okay with a bit less of the warm reassurance offered by Dr. Tan.
Here are four of the less-commonly-known facts from the above books:
A decline in memory doesn’t mean you’re losing your whole mind. Other cognitive skills remain to help you navigate a thriving life. Not everyone suffers the final stages of dementia. The earliest stages can last for as many as 10 or even 15 years, offering those with mild cognitive impairment a fair chance of never progressing to the most severe forms. Meanwhile, suggests Dr. Tan, if you’re the partner or caretaker of an early-stage impaired person, don’t miss this chance to help them enjoy the experiences that might otherwise be put off too long, such as travel or learning something new.
When young and healthy, the way you live may affect the timing and degree of any future mental loss. That may mean giving up the fatty meat, eating your greens, and talking to a doctor about ways to get enough good sleep without potentially harmful methods, i.e., marijuana in any form, alcohol, or sleeping pills.
Don’t fret over the normal ways our thinking changes as we age. Getting lost while driving to an unfamiliar place, for example, is no big deal if you’ve always had a poor sense of direction. If you’re losing what was a great sense of direction, it may be time to investigate. Having trouble with names and faces is a common symptom, though it’s frequently a normal part of aging. So long as you can give yourself “hints” that bring back a name or word that temporarily eludes you, that’s probably normal. So if the hard-to-recall word pops up later, relax. With actual impaired cognition, time itself won’t bring back the lost word. It’s gone.
If you’ve always gotten by with a casual approach toward keeping track of life’s details, you can learn to use calendars, day-planners, and the like. The friend I mentioned earlier enjoys shopping for eye-catching sticky notes to enhance the effectiveness of the large wall calendar on which she now depends.