Last winter, a man named David sat down in my office and told me, in a careful, measured way of someone who has rehearsed a sentence during the drive over, that he believed he was developing dementia. He was 61 and a retired civil engineer.
David had stopped going to restaurants because he could no longer follow a conversation across the table due to difficulty hearing. He had given up driving in the evenings because oncoming headlights smeared into halos. Once a month or so, when he stood up from his desk, the room would tilt, and he would have to grab the doorframe. His primary care doctor sent him to a specialist, who ran a series of tests and told him these events were simply symptoms of getting older. David came to me because the answer he received did not feel right—but he was afraid of what the right answer might be.