brains, minds, relationships, and time

Everyone I have met who is worried about changes in memory - especially if those concerns are combined with questions about changes in thinking or personality - thinks about their suspicions in terms of time.

“How long until I can see someone who might be able to tell me what this is?”

“Why be in a hurry if there are no cures?”

“What will I need? And, how long do I have before I need to make those plans?”

“When should we talk about it with others? And, what should we say?”

“Is there anything we can do now to change anything?”

direction

I can answer some of those questions now.

It may be faster to “get in” to see me than a neurologist or neuropsychologist to try to answer the question “What is this?” You should know that there are a lot of explanations for symptoms like yours.

There are no cures - no pills to take, no injections or infusions, no helmets to wear that might zap a brain to an healthier state - that’s true. People are working in all those directions. But for people concerned today, the most optimistic of the projected timelines suggest those interventions will not be as useful as we’d hope - in time. The best I think we can do is listen and learn from the people affected - those who may get a diagnosis and those who love them - and build smart responses to their “here and now” experiences.

It is hard to know what each person, partnership, or family might need. Even if we knew for certain on a single day, much of it can change in a matter of weeks or months. The trick to not feeling overwhelmed all the time is to know there will be change and to believe that we can do something to help you adapt.

About what to share with others and when - that, too, will be a very individual decision. But it is a decision that I think people should think about. Many of the people I’ve listened to talk about this kind of experience wished they had taken some time on their own to work through some of their reactions before questions about the condition became a routine part of many conversations with others.

Finally, there is a lot we can do. We can use the principles that describe how learning works, how adjustment occurs, how change is managed, how brains are different from minds, how relationships are affected by adversity, how healing can co-exist with illness - and we can construct responses just for you and meant for today. And, if we’re conscious of the possible paths ahead, we can learn things today that we don’t have unlearn on some future day to keep things working.