Losing my mother’s memory, and my memory

My cat, Harriet, was lying on the TV console when I entered the living room. It flashed at me slowly. Cats blinking at you is supposed to be a sign of affection. I blinked again.

“Look at you on…”

I’m tracking. What are you sitting on? treasury? shelf? It takes me about five seconds to remember the word.

“Console,” I finally say.

I feel embarrassed. I’m talking to my cat! But more importantly, I couldn’t remember the word “console”.

This has been happening for a few years. Not only do I forget words, I forget simple tasks. Sometimes I forget to lock my car. Sometimes I leave my keys at the front door.

In the summer of 2023, I forgot my toiletry bag at an airport hotel in Rome. During that same trip to Europe, I left a vibrator in a Paris hotel and had to ask a friend to retrieve it for me. (She was a very good rocker and a very good friend). ​​During my next trip to Europe, in 2024, I left a sweatshirt at the same hotel. God only knows what the hotel manager thought of me.

My mother lost her mind about ten years ago, and I’m afraid she’s losing her mind too.

My mother never took care of herself, so I wasn’t entirely surprised when, in her early 70s, she suffered a series of mini-strokes. After that, her cognitive abilities began to decline. At first, it was just absent-mindedness that I attributed to age rather than weakness. No one was worried. My mother still reads a lot, for one thing: thick, dense books about American history, race, gender, and religion. She wasn’t locking herself out of the house or letting bills pile up. She could write and mail a check, all in her flawless cursive handwriting.

Then, when she was in her late 70s, she began to forget things that had just been said, not just facts from the distant past. Medications were ignored. I started to worry about driving it. Eventually, in the spring of 2019, her primary care physician suggested neuropsychological testing. My mother complained about the test because it was long and complicated, she told me, after she picked it up from a medical office in Sacramento.

A week later, we got the results: a diagnosis of “mild cognitive impairment.” This, he told us He could Be a precursor to a more serious condition, such as dementia. My mother didn’t seem to be fully digesting the news. I didn’t know whether it was her stubbornness or depression, or perhaps both, or whether it was a symptom of MCI itself.

Then, in December of 2020, my mom fell and broke her wrist. I contracted Coronavirus disease In the emergency room, he became delirious and aggressive. She apparently did not understand that she was sick, or that anyone was trying to help her. Even after the infection was over, things didn’t look much better. So, in February of 2021, I toured a few assisted living facilities and moved my mom and her cat into one, in a ground floor studio unit.

The onset of my mother’s dementia coincided neatly—or not so neatly—with my anxiety about my own mental state. I used to forget past events, and the names of people I had met several times. I felt unmotivated and easily distracted, which was unsettling on a professional level. I had a full-time job, plus a book to write. I wasn’t okay with either of them. My work was helping me pay for my mother’s care.

It made sense that my knowledge would be challenged by all the logistics of arranging my mother’s affairs and navigating the medical and elder care industries. But I’ve always prided myself on my ability to multitask, and do it well, and I never feel as if I’m doing anything well.

At first, I tried to reassure myself that my suffering was just that Coronavirus disease-related to. Everyone seems to be experiencing distorted thinking during the pandemic, whether they actually have it or not Coronavirus disease. I also knew that memory loss could be caused by perimenopause. I was in my late 40s and had a few other symptoms — mostly night sweats — which suggested I was already experiencing midlife hormonal fluctuations. (In 2023, I had a hysterectomy, but the surgeon left my ovaries intact, meaning I didn’t go into surgical menopause.)