In the past year, I have felt myself becoming extremely "calm"...ME, whose middle name is Anxiety. 😆 I am 61 years old, have 2 children living in other states more than an 8 hour drive away, I am retired and my husband (second) is 8 years older than I am. I loved the new me... until I found my short-term memory getting worse (me, who was once told I had a "mind like a steel trap"). I had a headache lurking in the background most days, I developed binocular double vision (each eye has almost perfect corrected vision but can't work together correctly), and dizzy spells that started to go to vertigo that would cause me to fall down. I had also developed tinnitis in Nov 2020 but that greatly reduced when the vertigo began for some reason. My eye surgeon has referred me to a neuro-opthamologist and my family doctor sent me for an MRI.... which has come back abnormal.... with mild white matter disease, biparietal atrophy and multiple white patches. The radiologist put forth several possible causes including MS (my daughter was diagnosed at age 34), myelitis, vasculitis, etc. My family doctor is backing up my referral to the neuro-opthamologist. That appointment is not until early August.
My question is this.... My children do not live near me and I have....and always will... encouraged them to live independent, free, full lives. I gave up everything I wanted to do in life to be there for my Mom (Dad died when I was 19), get married, have children and take care of her in her old age... as she expected me to do. We always lived within an hour of each other and she eventually moved to where I lived, 10 minutes from me. She died in 2012. I vowed to NEVER place my own kids in that position. They are now both married, have no kids (which is fine with me!), son has a nice house in the mountains and daughter is settling on her first home next month. They both have good careers.
My question is this..... should I let them know what is going on with me now or wait until a definitive diagnosis, which may take many months or even a year or so? I feel myself declining, mentally and physically, but I do not want to disrupt their lives or place any undue burden on them. I do realize that, if it is MS, symptoms will come and go. But if it is something degenerative... am I wasting time not saying something to them? Many thanks for any advice y'all can give!
In the meantime, get all of your affairs in order:
POA, will, advanced directive.
Clean your home and get rid of unnecessary items.
Decide where your remaining items are going to go.
Put your bills/banking on autopay.
Put all of your important information in one place, where your children can find it.
Finalize your burial/funeral situation now.
Do all of this now, to take some of the burden off of your children, so that when you find out what is wrong, everything will be taken care of.