#SOL 16 Day 13

Sometimes we survive by forgetting. ~Unknown

Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me! is an hour-long weekly radio show on NPR where contestants play various games featuring questions based on the week’s news. When I can, I like to listen to it and play along on Saturday afternoons.

These days, however, “wait, wait….don’t tell me” has a different meaning for me.  It seems like I am constantly forgetting words or why I walked into a room.  This is frustrating and unnerving.  Here I am in the middle of class, and I can’t think of the word I want to say.  Sometimes I can even see the first letter of the word I want to use. It is on the tip of my tongue, yet I cannot retrieve it from the filing cabinet of my brain. My students even try to fill in the word for me.  That’s when I want to say,”Wait, wait….don’t tell me!” But they can only wait for so long.  They really are trying to be helpful.

When this forgetfulness first started happening, my mother would tell me that is was because I was doing so much and had so much on my mind.  I believed her. It was plausible.  Yet in the back of my mind I kept worrying that I had early stages of dementia. On more than one occasion I would be in the middle of a conversation and not remember what I was talking about! Then If I remembered, I would have to blurt it out right away before I forgot again.

So rather than ask a medical professional about my memory issue, I played Nancy Drew, and set out to solve the mystery myself.  The more I read, the more I realized that what I was experiencing, and am still experiencing, is a symptom of menopause. So of all the 34 possible symptoms listed I hit the jackpot and am suffering from memory lapses.  What are the other 33 you ask?  Sorry, I don’t remember.