Mental block
Each morning when I wake up, I do a word puzzle. This involves solving two words, a five and six letter one. When one gets the correct letter in the correct place, it shows up as green, and when in the wrong place, as yellow. Letters that don’t belong in the word are black. This morning’s six letter word should have been simple. In my first guess I was given a yellow h, showing that h belonged, but not in the first place where I had put it. My second attempt, showed a green o for the third letter, a green l for the fifth letter and a yellow s as the last. I immediately saw the word shoulder, but as this word only had six letters, I drew a blank. I worked out that the word would most likely be shoul with an end letter to complete it. In my head, I was thinking shoulder (sholleder) and thus the shorter version as sholled. When I couldn’t see any other letter that fitted, I put the d on, still thinking sholled in my head. I was surprised when it came up blue, telling me it was a word. I submitted and hey presto, it was correct. Then the penny dropped. The word was should (shood). How could I have been so absent-minded?
That really is a worry, particularly as I seem to be having more of these occurrences, but for the life of me, my brain was only seeing sholled. Perhaps it was too many years working as a massage therapist, when shoulders, necks and buttocks featured heavily, or one too many sleepless nights, though last night I did manage to sleep seven hours in one stretch.
Alzheimer’s is a worry as one gets older. My mother always worried about contracting it, yet she remained sharp as a tack right to the end. But lately I have been forgetting people’s names with far more frequency. If I haven’t thought of a person for a while, a picture comes up in my head, but the name eludes me. I talked to a lovely young man the other day. I knew him reasonably well, I could recall his wife’s name, his brother’s name (whom I hardly knew) but not his. I initially thought his name was that of his brother but somewhere deep inside I knew that wasn’t correct, that that name belonged to his brother. A day or two later, the name came to me.
Three times recently, I have been shopping and gone to the wrong car and lifted its handle only to realise, this isn’t Stephen’s, it is somebody else’s. Another time, it was in the pouring rain and I wondered why Stephen, who had ducked out ahead of me, hadn’t unlocked the car, then I saw his behind me. Then I have looked for the wrong car a couple of times. We travelled up in the blue one, I am looking for a grey one. These are all absent-minded mistakes and I tell myself to think, next time I am looking for the car, for example. But it seems I am drifting into a space more frequently, where thinking doesn’t occur how it used to.
Should I genuinely be worried about Alzheimer’s or am I just taking on my mother’s stuff? Was she doing the same as me to make her worry about the condition? Every disease has an onset, some rapid, others more insidious. At 67, I do feel that any brain deterioration now could be a lot worse in 10 years. I would hate it for both myself and for my family, if I was to become incognisance. Of course, if that was the case, I probably wouldn’t know, but my family certainly would. I think the worry for me this time is that there have been heaps of examples, not just the odd one as in the past. I have always drifted off to another place relatively easily, particularly while driving but it seems I am entering that absent-minded space more frequently. I don’t want to have to be continually telling myself to stay present. It is easy after the fact, but I really do need to keep my wits about me. For the moment, I will blame these occurrences on the lack of sleep I have been having, cross my fingers that it is nothing more and be grateful that for the most part, that my marbles are still intact.