Sandra's Story

#iNoticedWhen….

Hi, my name is Sandra.

This is a situation that happened to me when I was still working, before I had been diagnosed with early on set dementia (Lewy Body Disease).

This is about writing. I used to be a very neat and precise writer. One day I was at a client’s office. Their staff accountant manager who I have known for many years, asked me to look at something I had written for the company about six months earlier. It was a cheque that I had written for the company for a government payment.

I didn't recognize my own hand writing. I recognized the background work to support this cheque for the payment to Revenue Canada.

She asked me to look at my other writings and supporting documents and cheques after that for those six months.

I was shocked at the degradation in my handwriting. I could not believe the fact that I had not even noticed this degradation.

I was ashamed about this decline in my penmanship.

In school I had received awards for my penmanship. Yet here I was looking at written proof of my hand writing as it is now. It was hard to imagine I had let this happen to me, let alone that I had not even notice it happening to me.

I couldn't help but think isn't this an embedded muscle memory that you would always write as you always did. I did not realize it is one of the signs of early onset dementia.