“She’ll be right mate”. We all like things to be right, and what’s right for some will be wrong for others. Life is full of contrasts, options, and decisions. Whether by choice or fate, we live our lives in an environment of constant flux.

Confronted with new circumstances and challenges every day, we constantly develop our own strategies to cope with them. Sometimes our surroundings and our environment changes because we initiate the difference; at other times we have no choice. But we do find solutions – or adapt – in the best way we know.

That’s because, in the main, we are cool, calm, and collected and can overcome our day-to-day problems quickly, and usually effectively, almost without thought. Of course, we’ve all made hasty decisions too and, most times, we get it right. From an early age we learned to size things up and find a solution. Normally there is time to think things through before we act. How different it is for a person with Alzheimer’s when indecision and wrong decision often dominate!

If we are reasonably agile and healthy we can normally cope with our regular personal tasks automatically. Of course, I will admit that my own mundane choices for what to wear, clean, buy, or cook – or even eat, can sometimes overwhelm me! I’m guessing that at least some of my readers will identify with those occasional glitches and agree that it’s safe to claim them as ‘normal’ – and have a laugh at ourselves.

It all depends on frequency. Lapses of memory, occasional temper tantrums, strange decisions, disturbed sleep, language problems, melancholy moodiness, are just some of the ordinary aspects of life that manifest themselves in us all at some time, hopefully briefly. However, when you see them repeatedly in your partner, please do something about it. Don’t, as I once did, think everything is ‘as right as rain’ and adjust your life to cope with those constant behavioural ‘oddities’.

The weather in Melbourne is somewhat unpredictable, so we have learned to adapt and cope with it. And our personal and our partner’s behaviour is normally and reasonably also foreseeable. But, if their daily lifetime reactions are erratic and often random, it’s time to check the ‘personal’ forecast! When indecision, or wrong-decisions, unusual reactions and memory distortions frequently dominate your partner’s behaviour it could be an alert or a pointer to a health problem, and a possibility of Alzheimer’s.

So, if you see those personal storm clouds gathering, if you sense a serious difference in your partner’s weather pattern, do something about it. At least talk to your doctor.

Don’t wait till it rains to buy an umbrella. And you’ll need more than an umbrella if a storm breaks….