I’m A Writer Who Is Beginning To Lose Her Words. I’m Terrified Of What Will Happen Next.

I should’ve known it was coming for me – the fog, the forgetting, the cognitive impairment. My father, his brother, their mother, their grandmother all had it... I just didn’t expect how it would come for me.

At 54, it seems my forgetting is linked to a neurodegenerative disease. But even before my own memory and language issues began, I’d written about and wondered what my own neurological inheritance might be.

In 1981, I spent several afternoons in the peacefully lamp-lit office of an elderly...