I am 51 years old, but have been having memory issues for a couple of years or so and they are getting worse. I have difficulty with common words and every day I will find myself struggling to find a common word once, twice or more often. Last year this happened perhaps once a month or so, and it seems to be gradually getting worse. I also forget work related facts and terms that cause me to struggle to do my job as well as I should. On top of all this I have found things progressively more difficult to organise in my head, which has had an even more profound effect on my ability to work.
I took these concerns to my GP earlier in the year and he referred me to a neurologist who did some very basic checks, then referred me for an MRI. I got the results of this a few days ago and it shows “mild excess shrinkage of the brain in the parietal lobes”. The radiologist wanted to do more scan related to the brain metabolism (PET?), but the neurologist is wanting to send me for more in-depth memory tests.
This is far from a diagnosis, but with a reasonable knowledge of human anatomy and some good Google-Fu I suspect Alzheimer’s is top of the list of suspects.
It seems that it may take months to get a diagnosis one way or the other and this is not easy.
How do people cope with all this dragging uncertainty?
I took these concerns to my GP earlier in the year and he referred me to a neurologist who did some very basic checks, then referred me for an MRI. I got the results of this a few days ago and it shows “mild excess shrinkage of the brain in the parietal lobes”. The radiologist wanted to do more scan related to the brain metabolism (PET?), but the neurologist is wanting to send me for more in-depth memory tests.
This is far from a diagnosis, but with a reasonable knowledge of human anatomy and some good Google-Fu I suspect Alzheimer’s is top of the list of suspects.
It seems that it may take months to get a diagnosis one way or the other and this is not easy.
How do people cope with all this dragging uncertainty?
