Cognitive Problems

We're back to square one when we defined senior moments as that awkward moment when we couldn't locate our keys, or while in the super market couldn't remember what we should buy. Or where we parked the car.

We have seen in these senior moments that there are all kinds of senior moments. Some may be stretched a bit to make 'em fit. Frankly, I wasn't sure when I began if I would run out of senior moments but it hasn't happened yet.

As you know, cancer caught up with me in my 82nd year giving me quite a few more senior moments. While lingering in the waiting room to see the physician, my wife spotted a magazine, “Cure.” New to me, I read an article about “addressing and correcting cognitive problems among older cancer patients.” Right down my alley.

Laura Bell went on to tell about a robust man of 60 who seemed unable to wean himself from the “juice” as he called it (the chemicals administered to kill those troublesome cancer cells). He would stare at his computer, his brain trying to summon moves that previously came automatically [like control c to copy].

When he mentioned these things to his oncologist, he casually remarked, “Well, Don, you aren't getting any younger.” Yet the good doctor realized that cancer and chemo-therapy do conspire together to create greater mental consequences than any single one could cause by itself. Maybe the aging brain does lose some of its agility which could be complicated by other causes.

This poses more questions than answers says the director of the Neurocognitive Research Laboratory at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Alas, we are also informed that a lot of these kinds of studies are not conducted on seniors.

We know that chemotherapy can do wonders but also has a few side-effects that are not only physical but cognitive in nature. Now I am beginning to realize why some inexplicable occurrences happened that I hadn't anticipated. When our systems are taxed by extraneous forces, physical, mental and emotional, why shouldn't there be some cognitive effects like senior moments, imbalance, a stubborn, noncompliant memory?

Worse, perhaps, is misdiagnosing a senior moment and calling it dementia or giving it a name, Alzheimer, when it may be only a temporary ripple. Good luck to those researchers when they try to figure out seniors. We are an elite, tough bunch, are we not?