Losing the plot?

I was very embarrassed last week. We spent the evening with friends and I told them a funny story about something my grandson had said that afternoon. Later on I started to tell the same story again. I was told I was repeating myself by one of the friends who is 80 and 12 years older than I am. The next day I told my husband I would like to watch something on tv. He asked what programme it was and I had no idea!
I sat down the following morning and had a think. I hadn’t been sleeping well and was also anxious. I told myself not to dwell on it. So far so good!

SueDonim is right, you have insight Pollyj which would be lacking in dementia. More than likely you are stressed and anxious which is causing you the problems. Take time to relax and unwind.

Take heart pollyj, I am only just 60 and have been like that for ages. I’m sure the menopause has a lot to answer for! Last week I was in a shop paying for goods, when the telephone started ringing. “Answer your phone if you want to, I can wait” , I said to the shop assistant. “It’s your phone that’s ringing” she replied, Doh! Couldn’t stop laughing ?

I too forget things, open the wrong cupboards when I know full well where things are, get name blindness, stop in the middle of the sentence with a blank brain, so I think many of us are in the same boat.

In January I read an article about keeping my brain active as I age. I am 73. I decided to follow the Dr’s advice and have definitely felt better for it as follows.

I have joined Duolingo (free) and have started to learn Spanish. I am so surprised at how many words and phrases I can remember and I have only opted to do 5 - 10 minutes a day. I have followed Gyles Brandreth’s advice and have started to relearn poetry from my school days. I have got from the library a book for children on how to play Chess and have bought from the charity shop a cheap chess board. At present I am learning the moves of the pieces. I will be playing my 7 year old grandson when I see him next.

It has given me a real sense of achievement and if the dreaded A gets me in the end I will go down fighting. ?

I’ve read that the time to worry is when you don’t realise you’ve got something wrong. The very fact you are able to remember these incidents and write them down could be reassuring.

I think we all have so much going on nowadays and are bombarded with information. I am absolutely certain that spending too much time on the internet affects my memory. I thinks it’s because I’m only half concentrating on what’s going on round me. You only have to watch a small child with a screen to see that they can be almost hypnotised by it. One of my GC who never, ever sits down turns into a zombie when he gets access to a screen. He stares at it, barely blinking, and is completely impervious to anything you say to him. It’s unnerving.

Thank goodness for Gransnet.

DGS birthday party in my apartment yesterday, DD age 35 kept going upstairs to their house then coming back down to ask why she went up in the first place.
At one point she was standing at the top of my stairs shouting down to me.
My BF and I are both terrible with names have been for years and we have evolved a system to find out the name of the person we should know!!

Definitely. Ordered totally wrong pizzas the other day and my online shopping to the default address.
Far too careless and not checking basket details.

I hear you - or rather, I only half hear you. I remember details of several years ago, but I have to think really hard to remember what happened yesterday. Add this to the fact that my hearing is impaired, and you know why I sometimes say nothing, instead of replying with the wrong answer. That way, people will know to repeat what they said without my having to keep going "What? What?"... The chances are you'd have been thinking of something else, and just hearing, not really listening.

I got up the other morning, made a cup of tea, took it back to bed and when I came to drink it found an empty cup with a bit of milk in the bottom- I’d forgotten to pour the tea and hadn’t even noticed. My husband laughed like a drain, went and made himself a cup and when he poured it found he had forgotten to put the tea in the pot and had a tasty brew of hot water!

I worry about forgetting names of well-known people e.g. Hugh Grant and Jacqueline du Pré recently. I've got a friend who's a retired psychiatrist and she says "If you can remember within 24 hours, you're fine." I can't always remember them though!

I feel because woman..have dozens of things/jobs running through their head...every day..no wonder we get bamboozled on a daily bases...men/husbands on the other hand usually only have one job in their heads...and that’s the job they are doing..right at that minute...that’s why we r so good at multitasking..but it does take its toll..?

Pollyj. I'm 70, my mother &two mils all suffered with dementia and I know how that can prey on your mind every time you go off track a bit. Rest assured you sound perfectly normal to me. Just a lady spinning a lot of plates at the moment. (When I think of how on the ball I was during my working life remembering whole lists of addresses & phone numbers etc. But these days I've to check the newspaper to see what day it is!!!) We're pretty good at scaring ourselves. Have a cuppa & smile at your uniqueness

This is a very reassuring and timely thread, so thank you all. On Saturday I came out of Oxford Circus tube station, something I must have done hundreds, if not thousands, of times in my life (although not recently) and I had absolutely no idea where I was, couldn't make head nor tail of the roads or shops. It passed, of course, and with the help of my phone I was able to find my destination. I was very disconcerted, though, and a little on edge. While I'm sorry to hear that I'm not the only one, it is quite comforting.

Pollyj, my mum did things like this all her life and I have too. Only last week I set off for work 45mins too early (it's walking distance) and if my husband hadn't been driving past and told me, I'd have carried on oblivious. And I'm 64 and a half, and I just laugh and never worry. I KNOW my brain works just fine, but if something's on my mind I don't concentrate. Try chilling out more - worrying about anything at all leaves you with less brainpower for everything else! Hope this helps.

Pollyj I think we all do daft things, particularly when we're inundated with 'things to do'. For instance I have to do something at, say, 10am and then correct this to 11am. At 10.30 I jump and think I should have been doing something at 10am. My busy brain has latched on to the first time and refuses to acknowledge that it's wrong! Kittylester you made me laugh! Years ago, not long after my DD had had her first baby, she and I got on the lift at the shopping centre. As we gazed adoringly at baby the lift doors opened and we got off - to discover we were still on the ground floor. That was 16 years ago when I was 62 and I still haven't developed dementia! So don't worry, honestly.

If you were young you would just attribute it to being a bit tired, stressed, distracted.

Go and get a hearing test! Recent research indicates that your thinking and memory suffer even with a mild hearing loss and recovers when the hearing is corrected with aids. It also sounds as though you are an anxious person. As Oopsadaisy says, a person with dementia rarely recognises their errors.

When you have more than one thing on your mind this often happens - don’t worry. Your mother in law is probably also on your mind and may have mad you feel extra anxious. I recommend some meditation/relaxation exercises.

Thanks everyone. I love it here. xx

There's a difference in forgetting and dementia. Forgetting is when you have other things on your mind, or trying to do too many things at once.
Our ageing brains don't " store " things the same and just aren't as sharp, but it's not always the onset of something worse.
I don't even think about it and neither should others, just pass it off as not being the same as you were 40 odd years ago. Saying that, there are those far younger who forget !

Dementia is an entirely different set of circumstances which can affect a person in all sorts of ways with family members who are usually the first to notice changes.
Dementia sufferers don't usually know or realise that they're different in any way.

When my MIL started being 'forgetful', I asked her what position she slept in at night. She said "on my side". I told her this was not good as her marbles were falling out of her ears! At that point she wasn't very mad, and we had a good laugh about it.

Based on this incident I am up the creek with you.
My thing is names, seriously bad. I can remember lots of stuff but I must say 20 times a day “I can’t remember their name but you know who I mean”.
Relax and join us 60 somethings in our wonderful but often confused world..
Now, what was your name again? ?

oh gosh, I can`t even list the things I do "stupid" but then talking to people, a lot younger than me, 20`s, 30`s , 40`s and 50`s.... all do funny things...

I have come to the conclusion that it is sort of to do with technology,, there is so much "stuff" whizzing round the atmosphere, think of radio stuff.. when radios (wirelesses) were first mooted.. electricity... now all this technology..

where do you think all these signals go! and they must hit our brains..... come one.. tell me I am nuts even thinking this... but will take a lot to convince me otherwise..

where`s my glasses now? I just had them on my head.. oh gosh what they doing out there!! cups of tea...

and on and on and on.