What three words could I be referring to so close to Valentine’s Day? Good guess, but guess again. I went in for my first Medicare appointment last month and knew ahead of time that there would be two tests for mental acuity: draw an analog clock face and remember three words. I didn’t give one thought in advance to the clock face test – easy peasy. But I realized that I was rather concerned about the three words. I was picturing a long interval between hearing those three words and being asked to repeat them. It’s not the kind of test you can cram for, right? Sometimes I feel pretty sharp and other times I feel like stuff just leaks out my brain as soon as it goes in. Also, my dad had fairly early onset dementia, so there’s some family history involved.
The nurse did all the usual things and then gave me three words to remember, asking me to repeat them no more than two minutes later. Ha ha! I can still remember them now, almost two months later. My overactive fertile imagination had me placed on the very precipice of dementia – nay, halfway down from the top of that cliff and plummeting down to the ground. Sheesh. I was telling my daughter about this incident with a great deal of laughter. She suggested that my brain was in such a panic that I shunted the words directly into long-term storage, which made us both laugh some more.
Well, the day may come when I can’t remember the three words during that appointment, but I’m going to entrust that to the Lord. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
And that’s a true story!
I’ll probably delete this in the morning if I remember.
Lynniebeemuseoday 
My first Medicare appointment? I can’t remember having one that was identified as such. Was it some sort of onboarding? An establishment of baseline values? A get-to-know-you-welcome-aboard kind of thing? What if I had it and just can’t remember? I may just have failed a test even more basic than remembering three words!
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😂😂😂 You don’t have to have a Medicare appointment as such, but Medicare pays for an annual appointment like that. I just had heard these things from others and paired the Medicare aspect of the visit with a regular appointment. It’s weird. Let me tell you three words and then see if you remember them the next time I see you. That will suffice. 😜
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Thank you for that reassurance. Whew.
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