I have always been focused and goal driven. As my partner’s Parkinson’s symptoms worsen he has become prone to talking to me from across the house, but disease has caused him to speak softly and slurred. I hear just enough to know he’s speaking to me, but not what he’s saying. Sometimes I just have to go on like I didn’t hear him, but that’s difficult when you care about someone. So I stop what I am working on to see what he wanted, and by the time I’m finished I have completely forgotten what I was doing. So, I later discover unfinished tasks. I get flustered because that’s just not like me...and it seems like I’m getting that way with everything. I’ll commonly be up until 1 or 2 in the morning doing work and sending emails - clients praise the dedication, but if they only knew. Anyone else having same problem and have found some tricks that help?
Saying that, it took me 45 minutes to empty the trash last week. Seems like I found another task in each room as I emptied the trash (switch the laundry in that room, clean the soap scum off the counter in the bathroom, etc). And, yes, I did leave the trash bag in a couple of rooms and wander off to a new task.
Definitely scatterbrained!!
As I tell my husband, when I hit menopause, I found 20 pounds and lost my mind :)
There are, for me, two things going. One is age. I am 77. I was not thinking as I did when I was 30s before all this happened. So I was in the stages of--you know--leaving the room to get something,getting to the other room and forgetting what I was there to get, going BACK to the room and then remembering.............you know the drill.
However, add in this whole other thing, someone you love kind of crumping on you, and all the anxiety mixed in? It is other worldly. If I am at all anxious, if the control slips, my OCD hits like a hurricane and I am in the eye of it, paralyzed, unable to think, unable to move. I have entered the realm where it is true diagnosable dementia. You know, the butter in the cabinet and the cereal in the fridge. And it is the anxiety that does it. I am incapable of multitasking.
When I get myself in a good place, the zen of gardening or putting murphy's oil on the floors, I again come to a person who can function. But let a letter come in the mail "We lost the papers on the truck and are putting a lien on it"? Ha! Blown away again.
It is, in the beginning, such scary stuff. I AM getting older. Not as old as the bro I am trying to help, but OLDER and we have all our lives teased one another that he is only 7 years ahead of what is coming for me. We are like twins born 7 years apart.
You're OK. You are OK. Try to find what you can to relax. Give yourself at least some moments of peace. For me it is garden, a little painting, sewing kimonos for friends, listening to some true crime podcasts. I can restore my soul and my mind a bit as well.
Don't worry. You're OK. (almost certainly, hee hee. But where are those car keys)
You could have a little bit of burnout? Tired? All make forgetting quite understandable.