On Saturday night, I went to take off my eye make-up and got a couple of those flat cotton pads you use to remove your nail polish.

GUESS WHAT COMES NEXT!

Correct! I absentmindedly reached for the nail polish remover instead of the make-up remover, dampened the pad with it, and rubbed it on my eyelid. I smelled my mistake immediately.

What followed after a bloodcurdling scream was a dramatic episode of eye washing, attended by my poor husband who stood ready to drive to the ER while I whined, “It won’t matter if I’m already blind.” I didn’t want to open my eye to find out, until rinsing my eyelid a few hundred times. Then I poured distilled water in my eye for around 15 minutes. In the end, I was deeply shaken but still fully sighted.

Now I know that I can’t be trusted to do anything involving household products, matches, medications, what else? I’ve known for a while that my hands don’t always know what they’re doing, and I might throw away something valuable if the other hand is holding a used paper towel. It’s gone beyond the state of “not present.” My brain is somewhere else entirely, and often the somewhere else is literally oblivion.

Naturally I feel scared of what’s to come. I went to take that little online test to screen for senility and scored one point less than a couple of years ago. I googled dementia and Alzheimer’s and learned that you need a whole work-up to get a diagnosis. The drugs you’re taking, your levels of vitamin B-something, depression, all these things could be affecting your cognition.

The meds I take can all affect memory, and my sleep deprivation is no joke either. Deep down though, I’m pretty sure I’m losing my mind.

When I can’t use words, it’s going to be unbearable, unless I forget that I love words. I guess that could work out. But surely I’ll know if I can’t think of common nouns or the names of my loved ones. The other day, I couldn’t remember Anderson Cooper’s name. It took forever to retrieve it. Right now I can remember Steve Mnuchin and Mike Pompeo, but I just forgot the name of Rev Al Sharpton. Do I need these names, one might ask, and the answer is yes! I need to remember everything I know!

If only we could selectively control our memory files, deleting Taylor Swift stuff to make room for new passwords. I want to hang on to all adjectives! Laying in bed this morning (unless it’s lying in bed, I CAN’T REMEMBER) I couldn’t think of the word “transcend”. It’s not as dire as putting nail polish remover on your eye but still, it’s upsetting.

Many years ago, I predicted the advent of nursing homes for baby-boomers, where music of the 60s would be piped in all day long. There would be a chain of these facilities called “Summer of Love”, where residents would know all the lyrics of every Dylan and Beatles song, even if they couldn’t recall their own names. Just as every cynical joke about the future has now become a grim reality, there are already nursing homes and elderly day-care centers that try to create a bygone era for the comfort of the residents. They use facades of 50s diners or 40’s gas stations, and set up fake little bus benches for people to congregate around. To me, this is gas-lighting, but to the companies behind this business model, it’s a useful way to control behavior.

Now that it’s just around the corner for me, please don’t put me somewhere where they play Eric Clapton or the Eagles! In fact, once my hair stops looking good, I’d like someone to kill me, swiftly and humanely, with a heavy frying pan.

Do any of you have a bottom line for “quality of life” or do you look forward to hiking well into your 90s, bragging about your Boniva and reverse mortgages?

One day last week, I had the clever idea of paraphrasing Shakespeare with a post called “First we kill  all the something,”  But now I’ve forgotten what the Something was.

You’d think if I really hated it, I would remember it but you wouldn’t be factoring in my severe memory problems. I’m hoping someone can remind me what the Something is, and presumably it is a group.

Going through my brain’s rolodex of hated things, I have already ruled out:

Republicans
Christian fundamentalists
Fashion bloggers
The members of Cream
The members of Steely Dan
People who say “Everything happens for a reason”
Child molesters
Racists
TV chefs

Godammit, what am I leaving out? This is really bothering me! Please help, if you can.

~

*(My husband just responded to my question with “It’s too big a category for you.”)

Reading the New York Times online, I just got sidetracked by a link that said: “Worried about your memory? 5 Signs   it’s Serious.”

As it happens, I have no short-term memory and little of the other kind either. People are constantly mad at me for forgetting things I’m supposed to remember.   They point out that I’ve told the same story twice, and that I’ve already seen a movie I have no recollection of. The signs are all there.

But memory problems are also common in people with PTSD, fibromyalgia, and a couple of other conditions that apply to me but I forgot what they are. I’m not joking here, either.

So, I’m reading this list of warning signs and going Yep, yep, I have  Alzheimer’s, I’m screwed, when I get to number 5, Having Trouble With Choices, and I come upon this quote:

“If you used to be a definitive person and now you can’t work your way through choices, that’s a red flag,” psychiatrist Ken Robbins says. “Choosing involves enough cognitive powers — remembering what you like, thinking about how the options differ, and thinking about what you want now — that it’s a problem that shows up early on.”

DEFINITIVE?!?!? What the fuck?! That bastard means “decisive” and he used  the  wrong word! They’re not  interchangeable, Dr. Ken Robbins, Moron Esq.! English, motherfucker! Do you speak it? Where is the fucking editor??

I’m trying to calm down. But it’s hard. And now I can see my future: I will be hopelessly bereft of all memory, including my own name, rank and serial number, but I’ll be flipping out about word usage with my last dying breath.

My friend Heidi challenged me to compile a list of 50 bands I’ve seen. I balked at first, thinking No way, I haven’t even seen 50 different bands. I’ve seen some bands 10 times, but you can only list each band one time.

I decided to try it, and it was murderously hard. At #37, I was already scraping the bottom of my memory bank.   My teenager came home and I complained about my list. He decided to start making his own list.   He was up to 50 in a couple of minutes. I finally got to 50, by remembering an obscure punk band I’d seen as an opening act. My son stopped at 80.

My husband came home and took the challenge, saying he’d just list the 50 most famous bands he’d seen. When I read his list, I realized that I’d forgotten to list Prince!!!! It was such a big deal at the time, and yet I’d completely forgotten it. Shit! I also forgot the Pretenders, Iron Maiden and Willie Nelson.

Take the challenge! It’s a great way to test your memory and in the process retrieve some forgotten moments. Or not, if your memory is as screwed as mine is.