My mom passed on July 3 and I am still grieving and feeling her loss. The last 2 years being her caregiver, kept me very busy. Now with all the time on my hands, if I forget something I wonder if it is alzheimers. I will be 57 this month. Sometimes I can't think of a name, and I go nuts. How do you know what is normal, and what is the start of something? Is there anything you can do, anyway? I have been on anti depressants for almost 30 years, and I wonder if that can effect you. It does change your brain chemistry. The ssri I am on kind of makes me feel like my thinking and concentration are slowed. Can anyone relate to this issue? Now that I finally don't have my mom to caregive, I hope that I have healthy years left!
But I do understand how you feel... I have the same issue and neither of my parents have dementia or Alzheimer's and they are in their mid-90's.... it's just that we were thrown into a *job* where we got zero training, everything was trial and error, lot of frustration, and a ton, and I mean a really large ton of worry. All that worry caused the drawers of those file cabinets to stick and not open like they use to :P
My boss is 79 years old and I am 68, and we laugh that hopefully between the two of us there is one brain. We are always forgetting something, but nothing forgotten is earth shattering.
I have a depressive disorder and also a sleep disorder. I didn't go to anyone specifically to deal with the mourning, but during this period I was in touch with two psychiatrists, a psychologist, and a psychotherapist. All assured me that I was experiencing a somewhat unusual but perfectly normal form of mourning.
That was two years ago. I pay for items with my credit card and use my library card for books. I can sometimes remember as many as 3 items without a list! I'm back to my baseline, cognitively.
Stop worrying about dementia. It won't help, and it probably makes matters worse. Give yourself more time. The huge changes in our lives when caregiving ends take a lot of adjustment. It doesn't happen overnight.
I saw how death affects a couple married 60 years. Grandma died and Grandpa withered up like a leaf and died in three months.
I saw my mother die when I was 10 and she was 37. My father was an angry man for the next 39 years, he felt cheated and abandoned.
Will you get over it? Maybe. Only if you can move forward. Only if you can cognitively redirect from the darkest moments to the brightest ones. Every time it creeps up, I remember birthdays, vacations, tooth fairies and refrigerator art.
You gotta do that to survive.