I am taking a break from endlessly recounting our recent holiday in Croatia, to shift focus and examine a subject of interest to all of us, Anne’s brain. Due to its sensitive and personal nature, Anne has demanded the right of prior restraint for this post. Consequently, I will keep to a minimum all cracks about her calcified thought processes to a minimum, other than my choice for this post’s graphic.

This week’s schedule has been dominated with blood draws and Zoom meetings, where the question of Anne’s cognitive abilities is paramount. For more than a year now, she has been the subject of an experimental drug trial. The purpose of this drug is to combat dementia. For the last year she has been taking regular transfusions of this new drug or a placebo. At this point, we do not know which. Throughout this year, these infusions have been accompanied with similar interviews and I as her study partner, have also participated, but now that she has completed all of her transfusions, the interviewing has kicked into high gear. Today, is the fourth consecutive day this week, where study related activities have subsumed our calendar.  

Variations of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment have come up. This is the test that Trump once popularized to demonstrate what a stable genius he is, “Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV.” In truth, it is a phycological test designed to detect dementia. Anne’s variation of this test included the list of words, “Face, Velvet, Church, Daisy, Red¹.” In the same vein, this week she was given a shopping list to remember, “Popcorn, Broccoli, Salt, Apricots, Soup, Cereal, Shampoo, Avocados, Relish, Onions, Muffins, Shrimp.”

As her study partner, I was interviewed first. Among a laundry list of items designed to access her mental acuity, I was asked to recount two events in the recent past that we both participated in and that then could be used to quiz her about later. Eventually the questions asked dropped off the deep end and became so ridiculous as to make me laugh. I then realized though that for some people, people who hear voices that maybe they were not so ridiculous. We have done all this before and will likely do it again in the future, but this week seemed much more intense. Thank God, that no one works Fridays anymore.

1        Anne is uncertain if the word red is the color or the past tense of to read.