One thing that terrifies us in growing older is losing our mental powers; this fear is not helped when we are forgetful from time to time. The reality is we’ve been experiencing “senior moments”–forgetting things–our entire life, but we didn’t make a big deal out of forgetting an appointment, leaving the teakettle on or losing our car keys until we noticed we needed reading glasses and our joints were getting stiffer. It wasn’t until we realized that our bodies were aging that we started worrying about our minds.
However, most of the time a senior moment doesn’t mean we’ve lost it, it just means our minds are busy with something else and our brain will come back to us with the answer shortly. Here are some ways to tell the difference between having a senior moment and actual dementia (FYI: Alzheimer’s disease is a form of dementia).
Senior Moment–forgetting someone’s name.
Dementia–forgetting your own name.
Senior Moment–misplacing your car keys
Dementia–looking at the car keys and wondering what they do.
Senior Moment–thinking it is Tuesday on Wednesday.
Dementia–thinking it’s 1964.
Senior Moment–walking into a room and forgetting why you went there.
Dementia–after boiling an egg forgetting how to open the egg.
Senior Moment–telling the grandkids the same fishing story you told them last year.
Dementia–telling the grandkids the same fishing story you told them 5 minutes ago.
Senior Moment–getting lost at the shopping mall.
Dementia–getting lost going from your bedroom to the living room.
Senior Moment–forgetting a word you know when writing a complete sentence.
Dementia–not being able to write a sentence.
The reality is you’re probably okay. The vast majority of people meet their maker with their mental faculties intact. If you are concerned about your own or someone else’s possible dementia, your physician can conduct a couple of simple mental tests that will indicate whether there is a problem. Even if the test results are bad, it doesn’t necessarily mean dementia. Mental fogginess can also be caused by depression, a reaction to medications, or a brain chemistry malfunction that might be corrected with the right treatment.
I would like to ask a favor. Every week I have lunch with a friend and, occasionally, he’ll think of one menu choice, say another, and have to correct himself. He’s always done this, but since his hair turned gray he now tells the 20-something server that he is having a senior moment. Here’s the thing. When a millennial hears the phrase “senior moment” they often assume the older person is advancing quickly into dementia and may not make it through the dessert. For the sake of your fellow gray heads, please don’t publicly announce your lapses, it makes the rest of us look bad.
