The MRI I recently had tells us this: Both of my parietal lobes are shrunken and show lots of white dots which are scars from old strokes. Nobody is even pretending any more that my memory problems are not Alzheimer's. That's what it is and that's what they're calling it. Soon I'll be given an appointment to spend two or three days at a clinic in SLC which is run by a lady who does nothing but gerontology. How's that for a slap in the not quite 59 year old face?
My counsellor, who has militantly doubted this diagnosis, seems pretty sad and insists that I not "die before you die." After some discussion, I understood this request to be that I not give up. I said that perhaps I could rebuild pathways and storage shelves (so to speak) which have already been destroyed in my brain by frequent mental exercise. He seems OK with this. It's not as though that which is gone can be brought back. They can't do that yet. But I think I could form new memories by reading my journal and reading lots of history and maybe even reading my own lecture notes from back when I was paid for what I could remember.
OK. Enough of that cheerful stuff. Here are a few pictures I've taken since New Years. I think I took them all with my phone!
