VASCULAR DEMENTIA IN THE ELDERLY: You're Saying I'm Losing It.

According to a report by Johns Hopkins Health Alerts called Guide To Understanding Dementia, one of the differences between normal age-related forgetfulness and dementia in regard to memory loss is that the person with age-related forgetfulness "jokes about memory loss" while the person with dementia "may have little or no awareness of cognitive problems."

Late in the summer of 2000, Mother came to visit.  She was frugal to a fault, and there were certain things she just would not spend money on.  One of these was long distance services.  In the years that I was in college, one of the things that I sometimes verballly chastised my parents for was the fact that they never called me.  My whining  changed nothing.  They still did not call me. 
Long distance was for emergencies only, at least that continued to be my mother's view.  Costs had gone down considerably since my college days in the late 60s, but that didn't seem to factor in to her thinking.
Today, she held in her hand a telephone bill.  She wanted me to look at it because there was a charge of $15 for a long distance call, and she believed one of my daughters had made the call when she was visiting her the month prior.  After looking at the bill, I remembered that I had called Mother on that exact date, left a message, and been very surprised when she called me back and talked for a long while.  Usually, I called her on either the landline or my cellphone, but since I had moved that summer and  now lived 8 hours away,  I had the sense that day she had made an exception because she would be seeing me less than in the past and wanted to talk.
Although I thoroughly explained this to her, reminded her of the call, etc. she was unconvinced and continued to complain about the bill.  I finally told her I would give her $15, but that I just wanted to know if she understood what I was saying (i.e. that my daughter had not made an unauthorized call on her phone.  She had her own cellphone for long distance).  Mother answered a little bitterly, uncharacteristic for her, "Yes.  I know what you're saying.  You're saying I'm losing it."
She was still living alone, driving, teaching a class at her church, going to various activities and functioning well as far as we could all tell, but her words were prophetic.

DEMENTIA HINT:  Pay careful attention when your loved one says something uncharacteristic about themselves even if it doesn't appear to be true at that time.  There may be an embedded message for you there.