Not looking for diagnoses here. I won’t take anything as actual medical advice. Just seeing if anyone else has experienced an older family member doing what my dad is doing.
My dad is almost 80 and he’s beginning to exhibit some signs of memory loss and general confusion. It isn’t all the time, and he’s very active.
The most notable thing I’m picking up on is what I guess I’ll call revisionist history. For example, he’s a musician, but he talks about playing guitar as though it’s something he just started learning. When I was growing up, he played me tapes of bands he was in where he sang and played guitar. He always had guitars around the house and played them pretty frequently when I still lived at home. Not all the time, but he had them. When I started taking guitar lessons when I was a kid, he started taking bass lessons at the same time. I’d frequently play certain chords and he’d be able to pinpoint what type of chord it is. I distinctly remember one time he said “you play a lot of seventh chords”. If you’re a music theory person, you know what that is but if you’re not then let’s just say that it’s something you aren’t definitely going to know about unless you’ve dedicated some time to studying music itself and/or a specific instrument.
When I bring up the fact that he’s been in bands and that he played guitar when I was younger, he just says that he never took lessons and that now he’s trying to take guitar seriously. He hosts an open mic night nearby him. It’s pretty cool. It could be that he means that, but I guess I’m still kind of surprised; I never really got the impression that he didn’t take his musicianship seriously. If anything I always thought he took it more seriously when he was younger.
I’m not trying to split hairs here. “Seriously” is subjective. I guess I wouldn’t be pointing this out if it was the only thing. He forgets things pretty often, important things, like sometimes he thinks that I’m still working with a company that I left years ago. Then when I tell him who I’m working with he goes “that’s right, that’s who I meant.” I see him about once a month, more or less, but sometimes he talks to me as though we’re catching up after not seeing each other for a year. Sometimes it seems like the sort of mistake anyone can make. Sometimes I’m not totally sure.
I’m keeping an eye on it.
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Being able to play and understanding the theory are two separate things.
Has your dad been showing any other signs? Like changes in behaviour such as Aggression? Rummaging around the house? Getting lost or wandering? Not changing his clothes or forgetting to eat? These can be indicative of dementia or Alzheimer’s. Before you hit the panic button take him to the dr. It could be a urinary tract infection or something else like mild dehydration. As we get older our bodies present infection much like dementia but it’s easily treated. I worked with dementia patients for my nursing career and often times increased forgetfulness or odd behaviours were because of an undiagnosed infection.
As a general matter, forgetting things is normal whereas forgetting events may be dementia.
For example, the difference between misplacing the car keys and getting lost on the way home from the store.