DENIAL: When you can’t admit it’s Alzheimer’s

The Clock Test is part of some cognitive assessments where the patient is asked to draw a clock and adjust the arms to a specified time. Here, writer Lonna Whiting’s mother Beth tried twice to redraw the clock on the left. These drawings were created one year before Beth was diagnosed with early-onset dementia.

Mom forgets her birthdate.

It’s spring 2012 and I accompany her to a routine doctor appointment and the receptionist asks my mother her date of birth, but she doesn’t know. I have to tell her, “It’s oh-three, twenty-two, fifty-two.”

“Oh yes, March 22, 1952,” she giggles and shrugs her shoulders, as though she’s accidentally forgotten it was National Donut Day.

I don’t want to be at this appointment and I have to take paid time off from work to attend. I feel burdened by this inconvenience when I should be back at my office working. If I’m being totally honest, I’m also terrified.

Things are happening to Mom. Thinking things, like problem-solving, following directions, making decisions. It’s not, like, Alzheimer’s or something … I don’t think. Nobody in our family for as far back as I can go has ever had dementia; not even my great-grandmothers, who still sent me birthday cards until the years they died. Not even my great-great grandmother, whose claim to fame was her ability to high-kick her leg up over her head at the age of 89.

We bring a list of questions, concerns:

● Cholesterol — It was high last time

● Blood pressure was also high