3. I am not crazy.

As I noticed different symptoms, my children would often disagree with me and ascertain that this was due to me being “dramatic”.  Or, perhaps I was driving him nuts.  This was slightly frustrating. After all, I’m with my spouse more than anyone else.

After consulting his general doctor, Roger and I were assured that all of his symptoms would be resolved if he were to lose weight and get his sleep disorder under control.  As we went on Roger continued to lose more weight and deny that he was having any issues.  He agreed with my kids this was really no big deal.  Finally he agreed to go to a neurologist appointment.  Was it to appease me?  Get me to lay off?  I think in actuality, it was to get me to stop.  Going into that appointment, the physician felt that he was having typical issues due to aging, or “mild cognitive impairment”. He had an MRI of his brain and we then were referred for neuropsychological testing.

One of the things I observed with Roger throughout the years was that he was a great diagnostician. He enjoyed giving kids one on one academic tests and finding out what “made them tick”.  As a coach, he was excellent at coming up with game plans and formulating strategies. I once watched him sit down and plan out a little league play off game and work out many, many, different scenarios. It was then I realized how smart he is. He is a very strategic, methodical man.

All of this is important to know as the battery of psychological testing that Roger took was over an eight hour period and measured his long term and short term memory skills. Because he was familiar with the testing used the neuropsychologist had to use some different testing.  After it was complete, I drove us home and we waited.

Christmas came and we went in to review the results with the physician. We learned for a man at his age and education level, the MRI and the testing just didn’t “jive”.  It showed that Roger was struggling with short term memory skills.  Most of this showed up in the area of math and technology which are the areas that he taught. The physician was very kind, yet very blunt about the status of his brain.  (This will be argued that later on that it’s a “normal” 61 year old brain.) We left the office dejected, confused, and pretty upset.  Roger shared that he was worried.  What would people think of him?  Would they disregard him?  What would our kids, especially our son, think?  What did this mean for us? Would they think he’s dumb?  What do we do next?