Worried about forgetfulness

My 44-year-old son has given me the same train book for three birthdays running, but I won't be telling him. 😃 I expect you're fine, sounds pretty normal to me so try not to worry.

Try not to stress too much - more easily said than done, I know.
Since I retired, I frequently get the days of the week wrong. Today I had a dental appointment which I was convinced was tomorrow. If DH hadn't reminded me of it this morning, I would have missed it.

TBH it occurs to me (after a lot of experience of dementia, in both DM and FiL) that if you really did have dementia, you wouldn’t be worrying about having forgotten something, because you’d have very soon forgotten that you’d forgotten it (if that makes sense).

I knew (with sinking heart) that my DM did have dementia, and not just the ‘old age forgetfulness’ I’d been trying to kid myself about, on the day she phoned her bank about something (she’d always been very clued up about finances) and could not remember, literally the instant she’d put the phone down, what they’d said.
Talk about the penny dropping! 🙁

But instead of being in a tizz about it, as she would have normally, she’d forgotten the whole thing within a minute or two.

Sent a birthday card to my friend on the right date but a month early. They were very puzzled , I was mortified. Don’t worry about it we all get brain overload sometimes life is stressful.

Don’t think much of your friend

It was unkind of your friend to make a fuss over it. As we age it makes sense that our memory isn't as sharp as it was.
I got myself in a state about forgetting names and words I wanted to use but couldn't for the life of me remember them, the more I tried to think of the person or the word, the more my brain seemed to freeze. I thought I was developing dementia.
I saw my GP and she put me in for a brain scan and the Memory clinic. The brain scan was normal for my age and I got 93% from the Memory clinic tests. I felt such a fraud but I was told it's perfectly normal to have these lapses as we age.
What puzzles me though is that I remember things from years ago like the registration number of my dad's first car and the names of all the children in my class in junior school but ask me what we need in the supermarket without my list and I'm clueless

Easily done, could have done that in my thirties, being undecided, forgot you did the usual thing as its routine and say something interesting that took away your thoughts, forget it ,your friend shouldn't have made anything of it especially as your a worrier anyway

Nothing out of the ordinary for most of us, you are normal! You have a lot on your mind so it doesn't surprise me! At least you remembered the birthday (twice!).
If only it was easy to stop worrying! I hope the therapy helps a little.

I almost did the same last month, buying two birthday cards for the same person🥴 realised in time that I had already sent one.

Please try not to worry about one incident like this. When I was only in my 40s (so long ago) I sent 2 birthday cards to an aunt - I only knew because she mentioned to my mother ‘poor Witzend’ having sent two!

And very recently (as posted about on here) I found some valuable earrings I really thought I’d lost through my own stupid carelessness several years ago - and had tormented myself about it - whereas in fact I had put them away in a tiny box that wasn’t the one they came in. How on earth could I have forgotten where I’d put them?

Both incidents well in the past, and 🤞I still don’t have dementia!

I once went up to vote in a bye-election and the candidate I wanted to vote for wasn’t on the list. I was so convinced he should be that I had the officials at the polling station worried and discussing what to do as I left. When I got home and took out the sheaf of election leaflets I’d saved to prove that I was right, DH pointed out that the one I was brandishing was an old one from the previous election. I don’t think I’d even retired at that time!

I’ve done things like this and much more frequently during a period of high stress and poor sleep. You need to slow your thoughts down and do fewer things but in a more deliberate manner. Make lists of what you need to do or have already done. Keep as calm as you can and lower your expectations of yourself. No need to try to be a superhuman!

I booked my car in for the M.O.T. for the Friday before it was due. I planned to take it up to the garage the evening before and walk home. I was mowing the lawn and musing on what to have for tea, thinking it’s Friday, I’ll have fish, when it suddenly dawned that I hadn’t taken the car up the day before! Fortunately when I rang, although it was too late to take it then, they could fit it in on the Monday. I just completely forgot about it on the Thursday.

Alwaysworrying

Hello lovely grans (and grandads)
Just looking for a bit of support please. I am 67 years old and l’ve done (according to my friend in London) a really worrying thing. At the beginning of June l bought her a birthday card, her birthday was on the 25th June. I usually send a ‘Moonpig’ card (online cards) so this was a departure from normal but as Moonpig cards are quite expensive l thought l’d do something differently this time.On the 10th June l was flicking through the latest Moonpig cards as l’d been sent a link to new cards and decided to send her one of those instead. Fast forward to the 20th June and l came across the original card l’d bought for her and completely forgetting l’d already sent a Moonpig card 10days earlier l sent it so she got 2 birthday cards. My friend has said this is really worrying and l should speak to my GP so l’ve been worrying all night about this. I can be forgetful but not usually so it affects my every day life and causes me to worry. I’m a chronic worrier by nature-hence my user name and have a great deal of stress in my life, so now l feel like l have something else to add to my list of worries. Has anyone else ever done anything silly that’s concerned them like this?

Please don't worry, you mention that you have a lot of stress and other things on your mind and there is your answer.Your brain will just have overlooked the card thing because it's dealing with more important matters. It's also very easily done.I can't tell you how many times I've had an online shopping order and they don't deliver an item,they notify me of course, but I forget and spend quite a while looking for it because my brain remembers 'Buying it'.
Obviously if you started to do more and more forgetting or more people began telling you, then yes, time for a check up, but you sound ok to me. !

About ten days ago I told myself I needed to get a birthday card for my dd next time I went into town. I went into a card shop to choose a wedding card first and then it dawned on me - my DD’s birthday had been and gone the previous month, for which I’d chosen appropriate gifts and a card and even looked after the GC while she celebrated! That had totally slipped my mind.

I’m recently widowed so I put it down to stress and was thankful I hadn’t paid out £4 for another card. I don’t know if it’s true or just one of those sayings, but I’ve been told that if you remember that you’ve forgotten something, it’s not a cause for concern. It’s when you don’t know you’re forgetting things that you need to worry. I hope that’s true.

Don’t worry. I remember mum acknowledging she was forgetting things but, she said, I’ve always done that so I’m not going to worry.

It’s so reassuring to read these responses. Logically I know these oops moments are natural, sometimes I’m left wondering though.

My favourite oops is to forget to display my Blue Badge, or forget that I have! If I’m with Mr C I tell him it’s displayed or if I’m alone I say it out loud to myself, risking some very strange looks. 🤣. I find I can remember it that way. Why? No idea but it stops many unnecessary panic returns to the car.

Don't worry about it!
I could write a book about the things I have forgotten over the years. I gave my DH an Anniversary card 2 days before our 25th Anniversary. I swore blind that it was the correct day. I even brought out the Wedding certificate as proof and had to sheepishly admit I was wrong.

I was going to write about how I went out to take something back the other day and when I got there I didn't have it and had to return home to get it, then I forgot what it was so couldn't tell you! Now I've remembered it was a pvc tablecloth 😂

I did similar.
Woke up at 4.30am, ready to catch the coach from snowy Northern Scotland, sat on the coach for almost 2 hours to Glasgow, went to check in, and found my flight was the next day.
I wasn't very popular with my ex for the rest of the day.

My worst bloopers have involved my daughter. I can’t even give age as an excuse, I was only in my late 40s.
The first one involved us driving her and her boyfriend to the airport to catch the flight to Bangkok to go travelling for a year.
I’m convince she told me they were flying from Gatwick, wrong 😱 they were flying from Heathrow.
Not funny on the M25 at around 5 on a Friday night.
We just about made it.
The second time she had been to Sri Lanka for a month.
She told me that she’d always wanted one of those banners saying welcome home (name)
So of course I made one about 6’ long.
Long story short. I had the wrong day. 😱
So we had to drive home from Heathrow to Southend and do it all again the next day.

My late BIL was obsessed with "defragging" his laptop and now whenever I do very similar forgetful things like your experience Alwaysworrying I mutter " you want defragging lady" to myself.

My theory is that it's all there, stowed away in our heads, but it's the recall that's the issue hence, if we could defragg it would create a lot more space to mentally root around and find stuff.

It sounds quite normal, to me.
With friends like that... as the saying goes.
I've got a huge, long list of turning up at the hospital on the wrong day, not turning up on days I should have done and so on.

Dementia, and those types of things are not simply forgetting things, anyway, which everyone does.

It will be the constant worry about your DD or something.
Maybe have a word with your GP, at least to rule out anything serious.

All the best from me @#dozygran

Short-term memory appalling,long-term memory much better,you ask me to name my school teachers and I can name all of them,you ask me what I did the day before yesterday and I haven’t got a clue. 😬