Living with a person who forgets is shocking, especially if that person was so bright and full of life previously. I kept hearing about the wonderful progress in medical science, especially in imaging studies that allow doctors to study a living brain.
The warning signs of memory loss as I recall were; my late husband forgot recent events or had difficulty retaining any new information. There were times when he couldn’t find the right words and even worse, used inappropriate ones. When we were in our car, disorientation was evident. Once, we were on an organized trip and en route home, he became agitated. It took time but eventually he told me that the bus driver was going the wrong way. That shocked me. He showed difficulty with abstract thinking and all of a sudden he started buying large household items that we did not need. He became much quieter and stopped working on his stamp collection which was something he’d spent many years on. I no longer felt safe when he was driving so asked his geriatric neurologist to get him to stop. It is always upsetting when a person has to stop driving. The same applied to banking. I had to ask our bank not to renew his credit card which broke my heart as he had been the main breadwinner.
Until then, I had assumed that he was suffering from some kind of dementia but then, he was asked to undergo tests and I wondered what form they would take.
