Another day, another cognitive test

My care team began testing my memory and cognition annually in 2015.  I didn't get the 10 minute Mini-Mental Status Exam (the MMSE) or the minimally more sophisticated Montreal Cognitive Assessment (the MoCA).  No, it was the whole three-hour suite that probes every nook and cranny of your brain.  (Dr. Phatak discussed these tests in Beating the Dementia Monster.)  But in 2019, I was doing so well, they decided to relax it to every 2 years, and now I haven't had a test in almost three years.  They want to continue testing me triennially, but I'm able to get a sense for what's going on just in my daily activities.  For example, in a little while I'll have one of my practice sessions in Spanish with a friend in Ecuador.  How well will I be able to keep up the conversation?  I've been feeling pretty good about these activities for some time.  Nevertheless, my care team plans to test me diagnostically again this summer.

At the same time, I have been enrolled in a number of studies, mostly from the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center in Seattle.  One such study is referred to as vCog, and they want to see if these tests are just as valid if administered via Zoom as when they are administered in person.  So they have us take the test over Zoom, and then they test us a couple of months later in person.  And they repeat the whole process a year later.  Do the test results match?  Or do they show that tests administered via Zoom on your computer are less reliable than those administered in person?  We'll find out when they're done.  

But today, I had my last Zoom test.  And we should make the journey across the mountains to Seattle at the end of February for the last in-person test.  Since it's for research and not diagnostic, they're not allowed to tell me the results.  But I didn't have any trouble seeing that I did pretty well -- I feel very well about it all.  Of course, they will be able to share with me the results of the diagnostic tests I take this summer.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again.  Every morning when I wake up, I can hardly believe it.  I think back to how things were in 2015 -- when I was in free-fall -- to today, and I'm just amazed.  Of course, the first thing on the agenda every morning is a trip to the gym for an hour and a half.  That, along with the other members of the Dementia Toolkit, are the reason I can live the way I do.  Life is good.