Driving (1)

Visiting family in Napa CA

I’m going to be driving to the San Francisco airport to pick up Kai, Karin and Gabriel who will be coming in around midnight.  I’ve become somewhat anxious: Am I in good enough condition to be making such a drive over California freeways at midnight?  I sent an email to my neurologist who was fairly reassuring that—at this stage in the illness, before there’s even a formal diagnosis of dementia—I’m probably okay.  Waiting to make a mistake before I give up doing the books for Eighth Day is one thing; waitijng to make a mistake driving until I give it up is quite another.

Although it hasn’t made a big difference yet, I’ve begun trying to pay very explicit attention to where I put things.  I need to make a mental note when I put things down or have a specific, routine place for things where things belong.  It’s a little aid to help me compensate for what I cannot do.  (When I was an intern at St Mary’s in Duluth, all of us carried around a “peripheral brain” that contained details about drugs, procedures, evaluations and so on.  This is just an extension of that concept into a new situation.)