I knew little about strokes and their effects until I had one. I suffered very little cognitive damage, but one of the things that I discovered during my research afterward was that having a stroke puts us at increased risk of dementia, and being that I'm 61 almost 62, that's something that worries me, and I find myself looking out for signs that it may be beginning. Which brings me to what happened today at work: nothing major, just a worrisome occurrence.
I am in the middle of coordinating the development of six new units of rental housing targeted at individuals with severe mental illness. We can't just select the region where the units will go, we have to issue a Request for Proposals and let agencies out in the state request that the units be built in their region. A very bright young woman at work is responsible for coordinating the preparation and publication of the RFP, and this morning she sent me a draft to review. Everything looked fine, except that the date at the top was May 26, 2013. I e-mailed back and asked what that date represented, and she responded that she thought we had agreed that the RFP would be published this Friday. I responded back to her and wrote, "Yes, April 26." She responded by asking if I wanted to change the date of publication of the RFP, and if so to let her know as soon as possible.
After a few more back and forth e-mails of the same type, I was worried. There was something I wasn't getting here. I pulled up my Outlook calendar and looked at the date, and the months. Sure enough it was April now with May to follow. So what was going on? Was this it? Was this the first sign of the dementia that would soon render me incapable of functioning out in the world? Or maybe this was the first manifestation of damage from the stroke that hadn't been revealed before. Maybe it was an undiscovered dead area of my brain that dealt with dates of publication of RFPs. After all, all strokes are different, as I have read so many times. With these gloomy thoughts in mind, I called her, confessed my confusion, and requested clarification. "Oh, did I put May?" she said. "I'll change that now to April. Sorry."
So, evidently, I still know what month it is, and the dementia isn't here yet. I'll keep an eye out for it, though, and hope that the mental activity of working helps keep it at bay.
Hi Jim,
ReplyDeleteI have had an issue with calendars for a long time; working for a weekly newspaper has been a blessing and curse, as the cliche goes: publication day is Friday, so I tend to look at months in terms of Fridays' dates and count forward/back from there. The down side has always been entering story/event dates into my internal calendar; lots of mistakes there.
Certainly, I am not worse now calendar-wise than before the stroke, but if there is a calendar area in the brain, mine started out damaged.
Hi Barb. Where I work our Outlook calendars are indespensable tools. Everyone in our department shares access to our calendars, so all of our meetings, days off, special events, can be coordinated. I've become so dependent on my Outlook calendar and its notifications that I typically don't know what day it is or what I'm doing until it notifies me.
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