Bad News/Good News

First, The Bad

Lately I've been wondering whether I have Alzheimer's or dementia or senility or something like that.

I thought I'd found the answer to the problem in nutrition. I don't always include the oil allotment in my daily diet. Because it's only a couple of teaspoons, I tend to try to save it up. I'll use a fat-free dressing on my salad at lunch thinking that I'll want to have olive oil on my dinner salad, and then end up not eating a salad at dinner.

Add that to the fact that I'm too Points cheap on the Flex Plan to eat anything but fat-free everything: milk, yogurt, cheese, and the result is I was virtually on a fat-free diet for most of the days of the week for a couple of months.

For a few weeks I've had this intermittent memory loss. It's not my usual ditziness, which is somewhat always there and tends to be endearing and cute, but I'm at least aware of it. This was scary memory loss that made me wonder whether DH was going to get a telephone call from some men in white coats saying they had me in a padded cell and would he please come sign the commitment papers.

Of course, anything that affects me as dramatically as that gets me poring through my nutritional books and what did I discover? (Not that I didn't already know this at one time or another....) If you take all the fat out of your diet, your body won't absorb some vital vitamins and minerals. One of them is calcium. Another are some B vitamins that are crucial to cognitive functioning.

I changed my daily routine to take my oil on a teaspoon with my other vitamins right after breakfast each morning. If I wanted olive oil on a salad, I just counted the Points. I did feel better, but there wasn't a really appreciable difference in the memory loss.

I still felt as though I'd lost my "edge." I was sleepy more often and worried nearly constantly about it.

It was affecting my work. My head had a constant pressure in it and I had to think really hard to do normal everyday things. It took a lot of effort to get through the day.

I believe I now know how someone with Alzheimer's must feel in their good moments.

A couple of days ago I suddenly recalled that I'd had a head injury a few weeks ago when a six-foot-long window shade roller fell from about 10 feet over my head onto it.

I was dazed but didn't fall over unconscious, so I just continued with my day.

Today I asked DH to take me to the doctor to see if the accident and the brain fog symptoms were related and yes, I have a concussion! The doctor expects the symptoms to last as long as two months.

I'm getting a CT scan next week to make sure nothing's going on in there that we need to worry about. The doctor didn't think there was because my neurological tests were normal, but just in case....

And Now for the Good

It's temporary.

And Even More Good

For those following the weight loss:

1. Not only can I wear that red plaid dress now, but the mother-of-the-bride dress I wore at DD's wedding in 1999 fits better than it did then;

2. Thanksgiving did not affect my downward trend; and

3. I'm down a total of 30.8 pounds.