What
is really interestiing, is how well I look up all ailments my friends and family tell me about, but when it came to researching what happened to me last Saturday , I needed a friend who volunteered that she had had a similar experience before I was ready to explore the internet.
I became so frighteneed, in additon to losing an entire morning, I was frightened of what the future may have held. There is nothing unusual about my response. It is perfectly normal at age 83, to worry about death and disease and disability, with its concommitant dependence on others, loss of control and diminished sense of the furture's possibilities.
Here's what I learned. An event of forgetting, even losing a whole day occurs in adults beetween the ages of 60 and 80. In only 2 to 25 per cent does the same person ever experience another of these episodes. There is no connection to this transient amnesia to any other neurological illness or disease. It is not a precursor of Alzheimer's or other dementia, ALS, TIA or anything else.
I had a good scare. I aplogize for alarming those who love me. I understand my reaction as of course I have cared for both my mother and my husband degenerating from dementia and Alzheimer's disease. I dread putting my family through the trauma we have already experienced too many times.
We don't know the future. We can only live our lives the best way we can, while we are able, make sure our final wishes are well known and documented and relish the knowledge that in the way we live our lives, others are there for us and wish us well.
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