I have been thinking a lot about the press that Biden is
getting about his memory these days. Especially given my own age. The fact that
a judge who is not a qualified medical person wrote an opinion (and yes, it is
only an opinion) getting so much news coverage about a made-up situation is
amazing to me.
The reason I was thinking about it so much though has
nothing to do with politics. It is for personal reasons I care about memory
issues.
Last November when the home health nurse came to do an
annual evaluation of Joe and me for our insurance company, he gave us three
words to recall a bit later in the conversation. I could recall all three words
only because in my head I made a sentence out of them. (The baby is in
the kitchen cooking dinner).
Joe recalled two of the three words. I asked our nurse if
this meant our memories were declining. He said, it is not about recalling the
words, it is to see if a person is aware and employs ways to remember. In other words, the “words”
were not as important as the act of “how or even if we are capable of using some
form of memory recall.” Using tools/tricks to recall is not a problem. In fact,
any device to help with recall is a good sign of cognitive function.
I thought this was enlightening. Until I was about forty-five,
I could remember everything. Doctor’s appointment on January 5th of
next year at 11:00am? No worries, I did not even write it down and it was there
in my head. Even then I had friends, my age, carrying around date books and
writing down stuff. I thought it seemed awful cumbersome. Until I started
carrying one myself.
Oddly enough, I cannot recall the year my mother or my
sister died. I do remember that my dad died in December 1989. I have both mom’s
and Jeni’s death certificate copies saved electronically and the year as part
of the document name so I can save one step when looking up the date.
I also do not remember now when Megan’s first steps were. I
think she was eight months old. I know it was earlier than anticipated. I do remember
she potty trained herself, again early. But was it at 12 months as my brain
thinks or was it 18 months? Two years old? Shoot. Does it matter?
My cousin, Eleanor, is over eighty and she seems to me to
have an excellent memory. At the same time, I am sure she has told me she has
to write things down. If you sat and talked to her for a couple of hours you
would never, in a million years, say she has “poor cognitive health.” The same of
most people over eighty that I know.
Are you under eighty? Do you ever forget someone’s name? Oh,
my gosh. I did this just today. At the thrift store we have two or three Karens
and two Judy’s. I called the one “Sue” we have Karen. She laughed it off saying,
“Well we do have a lot of Karens.” I was grateful she corrected me.
When I started at the job I had before retirement, there was
a young man named, well let us say ‘Jason’ since I really cannot remember his
name now. I, on the other hand, kept calling him “Jacob.” He was nice to me
about it; however, others in the office would say to me in a rather exasperated
tone, “Beth, his name is Jason. It is rude of you to keep saying the wrong
name.” I finally wrote ‘Jason” on a post-it note and put it on my computer. When
Jason came to my desk, I would look at the computer and get it right.
Bottom line, here. I think that Biden’s not recalling the
date of his son’s death does not show signs of senility. Much like when mom and
Jeni died, I think it is the emotion rather than the date that sticks in my
mind (and heart). When dad died, I was only thirty-three years old. My brain
still had plenty of room to store dates. I was over sixty when mom and Jeni
died.
If as a country, we are concerned about our president’s
mental acuity/cognitive health than we need to screen all candidates before they can go on the
ballot. This screening needs to take place with qualified medical personnel.
Not with judges, lawyers, other politicians, or media outlets.
Should you wish to check out your own cognitive health: https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/brain-health/cognitive-health-and-older-adults
Added later at 7:35pm:
The Presidency Is Not a Math Test
Neither of the
old men running on a major ticket shows any sign of catastrophic senescence.
By Graeme Wood “These certifications offer false hope. Completing a full
presidential term, even badly, is a rather demanding cognitive test, all by
itself, and both candidates have recently passed it. Before any psychometric
examination is needed, candidates should be excluded based on the presence of
ordinary, nonmedical characteristics: stupidity, venality, amorality,
indecency, and plain old fondness for bad people and bad ideas. There is no
medical test yet developed to weed out these deficiencies. There is a nonmedical
one that is highly imperfect but the best we have developed so far. It’s called
an election.”
From The Atlantic
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