When Attention Fails And Memory Fades In Midlife

   In early midlife, Cathryn Jakobson Ramin found she couldn’t remember what she’d just read.  Names of people and places, book titles and ideas, seemed to leak out of her brain.  Worst of all, because she was a journalist, words themselves “started to play hide-and-seek.”

   Her first reaction was to cover it up.  Married, with two young sons, she felt way too young for senior moments.  Then one evening, on the way home from a movie she’d just seen with her husband, Cathryn realized she couldn’t remember the name of the film.

   That was the last straw. 

   She decided to fight back and do everything she could to roll back the fog in her mind.  Carved In Sand is the record of her quest to recover her memory and her brain power.  It is both a warm human record and a guidebook for anyone facing the erosion of memory.

   Along the way Cathryn Ramin interviewed top experts on memory and brain function, as well as countless people who shared her problem.  In the end, she discovered 10 interventions which helped restore her cognitive functioning.  They ranged from medication and diet changes to brain exercises, meditation, and salsa dancing.

   She wasn’t sure what helped most, but by acknowledging what was happening and acting on it, she resumed a normal orderly life.  This book reads like a novel.

From Carved In Sand:

--“I have found that the answer lies in acknowledging the problem.”

--“In time, I got my mojo back—ideas meshed, names made themselves readily available and words flew from my brain to my fingers to the monitor screen.  Slowly, I worked my way back to a mind I could trust.”