Brain Cells - where have they gone???

I can feel them dying, slowly, every day.  If they made a sound I could count them as they die.  But they are silent.

Words come more slowly now, causing my brain to turn in to a giant thesaurus, reaching to find a substitute for the word I've lost.  It's like going through a rolodex, looking to see what will fit.

The solution is...to have a lot of friends.  Why?  Because they can fill in the word you've lost.  It's best to have friends around the same age as you because they'll be more sympathetic, since they are going through the same thing!

It's no big deal if you recognize that probably from age 50 on those cells start dying...maybe even younger.  My 53 year old daughter called me today to ask me what she was supposed to pick up at my house and neither of us could remember.  And guess what - I remembered first!

The saddest result of dying brain cells was the demise of our high school class valedictorian.  He was brilliant and a Rhodes Scholar, a clerk for the Supreme Court and had a successful career in a prestigious law firm until...his glorious brain failed him.  He was diagnosed with frontal-temporal dementia which has been described as Alzheimer's on speed. Of all the brains in all the world this terrible condition picked his.

I guess I should be grateful that my brain still works well enough to do daily crossword puzzles, read and enjoy books, figure out how to get from point A to point B, communicate fairly well and be able to write this.

Oops, I think another brain cell just died.