Ageing friends

The last sentence from Madeleine45 seems to sum it up rather well for me.

It is very sad when friends have problems or die and we will be sad but at least we had that friendship and love for a long time and though it may not feel like it I think the sadness you feel now is because they were so important to you and it is good to look back at things shared.

Thank you Madeleine

Usedtobeblonde please do tell the AC. My late mum had dementia and it took me around two years to recognise that something was amiss - and I only discovered it when the police rang me in the middle of the night to say they had found her waiting at the bus stop at 3 a.m. This was a rural area where the buses don't run at night. It turned out that her close friends and neighbours had been aware of it for all that time and never said a word to me. Fortunately the police recognised the problem and notified the local GPs where she was a patient and the next day the GP visited and decided to hospitalise her for 6-weeks observation where she was declared unfit to live at home. Everything moved very quickly, we managed to find a good care home with a vacancy and in she went. I later learnt there could have been ways in which she could have stayed at home with appropriate safety measures but I simply didn't have time to investigate them.

Re those of us on here getting older, I remarked when I was seventy that I was just as fit and well as when I was sixty and then suddenly was diagnosed with oral cancer (thanks to my dentist). Two years on and I am "cured" but it brought me down to earth with a bang. In those 12 years I realised I have lost so many friends and relatives - many much younger than me - including two in their 60s, a cousin in her mid-50s and a childhood friend of my DD in her 30s - all of whom had been fit as fleas until the day before their deaths from previously-undiagnosed health problems

I admit I am still getting used to this idea that it could be my turn any day. My youngest DD is 41 and has just started her third round of IVF treatment and it has hit me that I might not live long enough to even see her child, never mind see it grow up.

I can only hope that I take after my DF's mum and five aunts who all lived till their 90s with my GA May making the front page of the local newspaper as the oldest living resident of Derbyshire at age 104!!! And she was fit and well till the day before her death!

Thank you Calendargirl. Yes, it is hard, but as I said, I do have much to be thankful for. Just need to learn to accept how things are now and make the most of what we do have.

I have a bad memory, I've seen the GP a couple of times some years ago and was told I was fine nothing to worry about.
I knew then my memory wasn't as sharp as when I worked.

Recently I've had a couple of times when I couldn't remember how to get home in the car. I wasn't driving it was was when I was sat in the car park before going home.
Could remember part of the journey then my mind went blank. I sat for a while visualizing the road back home and it came back to me.
The strange thing is I can use spreadsheets for my accounts and know how to work out formulas, which I have not forgotten how to do.
I have an appointment to see the GP this month to see what he thinks.