Suddenly realised I was getting old!

'get mixed up'. I'm sure that's what I wrote!

I agree that a lot of our actions are on autopilot and so if we actually stop and think about them we forget how to do them.
I repeatedly call my oldest DGS by the name of my oldest DS (his uncle). I guess that Oldest DS and oldest DGS are stored in very similar places in my brain and they sometimes

Lancslass1
12 x 37 - 444. not 666

Not so long ago, my elders group (inc. me) attended a fact-finding meeting run by Clinical Psychologists at Auckland University who are doing a major study on dementia.

Some of us had temporary, 'Why did I come in here?' type memory lapses. Others (inc.me) had longer, deeper and more worrying breaks - as if part of a jig-saw goes missing, albeit temporarily.

It's not just forgetfulness, but as if whole chunk of our known experience goes walkabout, just as Craftycat describes. About 3/4 of our elders' group had these lapses and yet not one of us has dementia.

Nine years ago I went to a place I regularly visit, had a lovely picnic and read a book. Then preparing to return, I had absolutely no idea how to get home.
I sat in my car doing extremely deep breathing and trying not to panic, while wondering if I'd have to live at the beach carpark for the rest of my life.

It was at least 30 minutes before the jig-saw piece dropped back into place.

Explaining this to the university, we all wanted to know if this sort of thing was an early sign of dementia and they seemed to think it was not. Jus synapses getting older and worn out like the rest of us and not firing as efficiently.

I've had a couple of lapses since, very short when, in a place I know well, it suddenly looks totally unfamiliar. This lasts about 10 seconds and then it all snaps back.

We all accept that our bodies don't always work at peak efficiency as they used to in younger days, so I suppose we have to apply the same logic to our brains.

I strongly suspect that everyone here had had similar ‘memory losses’ for years and as children or young people simply not thought about them .... if not, we would all get 100% in every exam, all pass our driving tests first time, never need to be shown something several times, and never ever have accidents, etc.

Don’t be too hard on yourself!

??

I was typing a text last week and couldn't for the life of me remember how to spell of. It freaked me out. I also apparently make plans to meet up with my daughter's but have no recollection sometimes. I laugh it off but it does worry me

This post makes me feel so much better, I had a similar thing happen to me a couple days go, I went to put my pin into my smartphone and I just couldn't remember the pin , it's something I normally do several times a day , I put it down to our brains being overloaded with PIN numbers, pass codes, all the household stuff that we do online as well as remembering hospital appointments, dentist, picking up grandchildren etc, Our parents didn't have to cope with technology like we have to , That's my theory anyway !!

It has happened tome due to stress. It’s like my rain just goes on holiday for a while!

My husband is all of a sudden going through this. He leaves the car door open when he gets out, bumps into things, walks extremely slowly, gets confused very easily. The doctor says stress but to my mind it is more. He is 78 and has always been active. He is supposed to go for a memory test in a couple of weeks. Anyone else had this problem?

I am not sure it is all to do with age to be honest - I have had a couple of 'moments' but my worst was sitting in my car in a tiny car park on the side of a quiet country lane, waiting for another car to go by because I simply could not remember which side of the road to drive on......

Never happened before or since, thank heavens!

It's happened to me too-was supposed to be going to a meeting at a place I've been to many times before, couldn't remember where the junction was off the motorway at all. In the end. I went back the way I came , in tears, sat in the car for a while, then did the journey again & found my way.I also get the "I've told you that, you said you would do that" lectures too

I once managed to put a paying in envelope into a cash machine. So embarrassing to have to fetch the bank clerk to retrieve it and also very worrying. Nothing similar has happened since.

30 years ago, aged 30, we moved 300 miles to the other end of the country with 2 children aged 5 & 2, we had no family anywhere near & I’d only met a few mothers at the school gate to say hello to. One morning one offered me a lift to the city, 35 miles away, for shopping. Lovely. We separated in the centre, agreed a meeting point & time, & off I went with my 2 year old in her buggy & a long list. A while later I came out of Marks & Spencer and absolutely froze in terror. BHS was in the wrong place and I had NO idea why, or where I was. I remember vividly the terror of trying desperately to remember how I’d got there and nothing would come to mind. I had no idea where to go to pick up my 5 year old and what to do. I sat on a bench & made myself breathe deeply while my daughter looked at me trustingly. It was truly frightening for a good 20 minutes, and I’ve never forgotten it. BHS stores always filled me with anxiety forever afterwards! To this day when we go to shopping centres I tell myself constantly ‘You are in such & such a place, the car is parked xxxx’ , over & over again. I can see now how stressed, lonely and distracted I was at the time, and these factors must affect our rational brains. But not permanently, just keep breathing!

Yes, Lisalou, my husband has more than once told me that I have not done something that I had promised, or that I have said something I have absolutely no recollection of. I honestly do not know whether it is my memory or his that is at fault when this happens.

If it is always the same person who says you have not done something you promised etc. then like me you will be left wondering whose memory is wrong. If more than one person has mentioned this to you, perhaps you could ask one of them to be more specific about how and when this happened, or to gently remind you of a promise etc. the following day.

I find it scary too, but it is worth remembering that stress can cause this, as can worries - it is not necessarily a sign of senile dementia and I believe it is not even one of the more common signs of it.

It helps to know others experience this. Somehow I find it reassuring but I am not sure why.
Take care.

I have done almost all of these. And felt worried about it. Left shopping and the food bags in the shop.

Got in a silly muddle trying to swap a coin for a trolley token .

I had to pick up my car from the garage and OH took me there. I followed him to start with and lost him.

That was not somewhere I did not know but I got totally lost at a motorway junction round about. I got sent off in the wrong direction more than once and trying to get to my home was a nightmare.
I went back and forth about three times to get onto the road I needed then, I was about five miles away again but at least I could eventually see my way to where I should be.

I had known that road that for 30 + yrs. Yes I am getting nervous
Others do seem to understand as well. For which I am very thankful.

When I get a bit stressed I found my mind just doesn’t click in its as if I just can’t remember. I,suppose we have to accept it’s part of growing older.

Thank you Craftycat for this post and to all who have shared similar experiences. It has been reassuring for me because it happens to me from time to time. I was really alarmed when I couldn't remember a simple recipe, a meal I had been making for years. I knew what the meal was but I just could not remember what ingredients to put in and at what point.

This is different from being absent-minded.

It has happened to me too. And quite often I have a moment when my mind goes blank. I think it happens when we are stressed, upset, overworked, and have so much on our minds.Or blame the hormones. I remember once I could not remember where I had to go next for my job (I work in the community) I managed to get to a car park and had to ring the office to ask what was on my calendar. As someone posted, with Dementia you dont know you have forgotten so that makes me feel a little better.

It's just getting older. I'm sure it happens to a majority of us old 'uns. Doing something and questioning how to do it, putting things away safely then not knowing where they are, forgetting the Pin number you've had for at least 30 years losing track of what you were talking about, pouring boiling water into a coffee jar to make a cup of coffee. Don't worry about it it's all perfectly natural.

MiL was in a 'squeezed middle' situation years ago, and was combining caring with working with ... everything else. One day she went to get changed to go out and when DH asked her where she was going, she had no idea who he was and no memories of anything else. Stress and overload, unfortunately it lasted all afternoon and was truly frightening for both of them. 20 years later, she's got all her faculties and her memory powers put us all to shame. Hope it helps, it is frightening but it's probably just a symptom of overload.

The most worrying thing I have done happpened a couple of weeks ago. I needed to draw out some cash from a local cash machine and,when it refused to give me any. realised I had put in my loyalty card from a well known coffee chain-almost the same colour as my bank card. Oh dear! Laughed about it afterwards, but it did scare me..

I shall shortly be having chemotherapy for metastases on my spine and hips from the breast cancer I had 23 years ago. A very dear kind friend has offered to come to stay for a few days to cook meals for the freezer as DH isnt great in the cooking department and so we wont need to live on supermarket lasagne and pizzas. I was sitting writing out a list of food we need from Lidl and came to the moussaka and I just could not think of the vegetable for it. In the end I googled vegetables for moussaka and up came aubergine plus lots of recipes for vegetable moussaka. If I mention forgetting words to my daughters they say it happens to them all the time too. So maybe it's because everyone is so busy these days.

This is such a reassuring thread, just to know that these phases are completely normal. I've had a couple of these episodes in the last few months - getting to a roundabout and not knowing where I was or which exit to take being the worst. It's genuinely so scarey and upsetting. For other forgetful moments I usually excuse myself by telling people that my brain is a finely tuned, top of the range computer - but unfortunately the hard drive is now full! If only someone would invent a memory stick to plug into my ear! ?

My girls say to me on a regular basis “ mum, I told last week”. “Mum, I’ve already told you that “. It used to really annoy me but my memory has been rubbish my whole life so I try not to worry about it. Yet, I can remember small events but am unable to recall major events. My daughters say most of the time it’s because I don’t listen that I don’t remember anything they say