Retrospect: What was your loved one's first SIGN of dementia? Mom's was TECHNOLOGY.....
I have done a lot of thinking about this in the past 6 years, since my mother was diagnosed with dementia. She's now in her seventies with severe dementia. But... what was her first sign? It all comes down to one simple, stupid thing:
The "INPUT" button on the TV remote.
My mother was always extremely techy. She was a business owner and one of the first few people in her industry to have a website. She was the first in the family to have a Facebook account. She was the first in the family (even before us kids) to send a text message.
And then one day... in my mid to late thirties (she was in her sixties)... a call came in. "The TV isn't working."
It was working. It was just fine. She just had the darn thing stuck on HDMI 2 and couldn't figure out how to change it back. She'd pressed the Input button one day to change over to the DVD player and watch a movie... then suddenly... the knowledge of how that whole process worked just slipped away forever, before she could change back to cable.
From there, it became the computer. She started forgetting passwords. Forgot where to go to pay her bills online.
Then the cell phone. She forgot how to use the keyboard. Then she couldn't tell the difference between the TV Remote and the cell phone.
And one day, she stopped getting on Facebook.
I'm just curious... for those of you years into a diagnosis like us... do you, in retrospect, have that "ah ha" moment of the first real sign of dementia? Something that seemed like nothing at the time... but now... years later... makes so much sense?
Like us. With that stupid "INPUT" button on the TV remote.