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September 30, 2005
Dr. BP's Verdict
So today I finally asked Beloved Partner the question that has been terrifying me. First I had to beg him to give me a serious answer as well as the obligatory sarcastic one. I was moved to ask because the Michigan conference was my first since the wreck, and people were asking me how I was, and I was telling them quite honestly that I'm pretty good but I still don't feel like the brain is working as well as it was before the accident. So here's the truth, Dear Readers: I've really been worrying about this. Lots of dementia in my family, in my grandparents' generation, and everybody following them has worried themselves sick when they reached the age that I have now attained. My father, who got increasingly crabby with each passing year but was otherwise pretty darned sharp when cancer got him in his 80s, worried every day of his life, starting at about age 50, that he was going to lose his cookies and not know it. So as a stalwart Moore, I started worrying at about age 50, too; and then at age 58 I went out and whacked myself hard three places on my head and gave myself a doozy of a concussion, to the extent that three weeks later I got lost twice trying to drive myself to school (a day that I will never, ever forget) and got better but still spent a good deal of the spring trying to regain the ability to, like, read for more than a half hour at a time. And now every time I get confused or forgetful, I think, oh brother, it's the dementia, hastened by the concussion.
Trouble is, I've been confused and forgetful all my life. BP told me about 15 years ago that I'd chosen a great profession, one in which the Absent-Minded Professor is a tolerated and even beloved figure. So how am I to know whether confusions and forgetfulness that I now experience are, like, my lifelong norm, or whether they're a dire sign that Things Are Sliding Downhill?
I ask BP, that's how. The man has never minced a word in his entire life and can be trusted not to start now. So here's his reassuring answer: "No, I haven't noticed anything. You've been capable of acting like an idiot at the drop of a hat for the 29 years I've known you, but you're no more of an idiot now than you ever have been." God bless him, that was his honest, unsarcastic answer.
So I swear now I'll find something else to worry about. BP would notice if I was, like, not getting well from the concussion, and he would tell me.
Ya gotta imagine the intonations of a 1950s Southern revival meeting here:
I'M HEALED!
Posted by senioritis at September 30, 2005 08:33 PM
Comments
If it makes you feel any better I, too, have been called the A.M. Professor more than one (million) times. I don't think that it is necessarily true, but it's usually things like putting canned peaches in the freezer and ice cream in the cabinet (really!) that brings about these comments. :-)
Posted by: dr. b. at September 30, 2005 11:51 PM
Too funny. Yes, many years ago I put the cereal in the fridge and the milk in the cabinet. It wasn't until a couple of days later that, by olfactory data, we discovered the mistake.
Posted by: senioritis at October 1, 2005 07:31 AM
HALLEUIAH! :)
Posted by: tyra at October 1, 2005 10:08 AM
BUT my brother, eldest niece, and nephew-in-law, having read this entry, assure me that I am two bricks shy of a load, cuz I'm mixing my metaphors. Marbles, they assure me, are the item that's wanted rather than cookies.
{sigh}
Posted by: senioritis at October 1, 2005 07:54 PM