More than half of us baby boomers will live into our eighties…and the incidence of dementia will increase. It’s our worst nightmare.

If dementia is the path before me, is it possible to prepare for it like I did with retirement? What happens when I stop being me? When is being alive not the same as living? Where are the inflection points?

I'm disappointed in my reaction to what just happened. I consider myself pretty savvy when it comes to spotting internet scams, yet I fell for this one. I did my standard due diligence, but I didn't think it through before I reacted. That's a pretty big mistake.

The notion that we may achieve wisdom as we age is comforting. Throughout history, many cultures have revered the elderly for this very quality: wisdom born of experience. It’s nice work, if you can get it!

So...what do you think? Does what I've described sound reasonable? Or is it a series of rationalizations to mask what's really happening to me? Am I experiencing signs of cognitive decline on the journey to dementia? Or am I just beginning my 5th career?

It was my first encounter with the normal decline in brain processing speed as one ages. I, of course, attributed it to my having so many more experiences and neural connections than they did so that it took my brain longer to sort through all the information I had stored up before responding.

That was a soothing theory to which I clung, but the fact is that our processing speed slows down as we age.

I know I am 70. I know this is normal, just as I know that a decline in brain function is normal. Yet I want my brain to look and act the same as it has for the past 50 years. I reject splotchy thinking. I bristle at the errors I am noticing with increasing frequency. Even though this might be normal, I don't like it.

I don’t want to mislead anyone. Just because I am making mistakes that I can write about doesn’t necessarily mean that they are not a problem…for me or for you. You see, I don’t know whether what I’m describing is normal aging, a mild neurocognitive disorder or early signs of dementia. I don’t want to scare you, but neither do I want to give you a false sense of security.

So now would be a good time to talk about what it takes to determine where one actually stands. In other words, to make a diagnosis.

This was very different from the experience I described in my second blog entry where I forgot what I intended to do on the way to doing it. Forgetting that I did something after I had already done it, though, was an error of a different magnitude.

Why did I snap at her like that? The therapist in me knows that emotions are triggered by underlying beliefs, so I knew I needed to think through what it was about her question that triggered me. 

As I explored my thoughts, I realized that I felt as if I was under attack, as if Sally was questioning my ability to remember and not just my memory of this one specific event. Was she keeping an eye on me? testing me for signs of decline?

So here I am, 17 days short of my 70th birthday. I'm still hitting pretty much on all cylinders. After all, I'm writing this and making edits as I go. And I'm paying bills. And I'm taking my medicine. And I make love in the morning. And I'm aware of errors I'm making and correct them when I can.