“Tell me what’s happening,” Dr. Hawkins asked me over the phone. I was not sure how to express the subtle changes my siblings and I had observed, but I breathed deeply and tried.  Well, first, there’s her memory.  She forgets what I told her just minutes or hours before.  And she’s forgetting the names of familiar people and places.  (Heck, I do that, too.)  Second, she becomes easily confused.  I explain simple things several times before she comprehends, and I interpret for her much of her mail.  Third, anxiety.  When something needs doing, it needs doing right now.  Small things distress her, until I reassure her everything will be fine.  And when go for a drive, she points to cows and clouds and airplanes and exclaims, “Look, a cow!…a cloud!…an airplane!”  “Well, I think you’ve expressed it pretty well,” the doctor confirmed.  “Bring her to my office, and we’ll talk.”  Raising with Mom the subject of a doctor visit to discuss memory and confusion hurt her feelings, though I had tried to gentle and assuring.  “I don’t remember forgetting anything,” she worried.  Hawkins was so kind, entering the examination room with “Hello Lucille!” and pulling her into an embrace.  He thanked her for having the courage and wisdom to have this hard conversation, but assured her she had done the right thing.  “If we catch dementia early, we have ways of slowing it down.  (And don’t worry about the name: dementia is just the medical term for memory loss.)  If you had waited until there was a real problem, there is little we could have done.  Dementia is caused by brain atrophy and is not reversable.  You were right to come in early.”  An MRI two years prior (which Mom remembered but the doctor and I had forgotten) had revealed mild brain atrophy, normal for her age, so the doctor moved right into Mom’s treatment plan, which included taking a new once-a-day pill and doing lots of word puzzles and needlepoints.  “Thank you so much for coming in to talk with me about this difficult subject,” he said.  “You’re doing great.”  Mom left the doctor’s office feeling good about herself and her future, and I left feeling grateful for a kind doctor.