A man having spells of memory loss, slurred speech and imbalance comes at the urging of his concerned wife. Dr. Kube orders a CT scan.
Ken was brought to the emergency department by his wife, Rebecca, who had concerns that he was forgetting things, slurring his speech and having difficulty with his balance.
Several of her friends had told her that they thought he was likely developing dementia, which was upsetting because her father had suffered from Alzheimer’s dementia and she remembered how hard it had been on her mother. I did a detailed neurological exam to see if I could elicit any abnormalities in Ken. He seemed just slightly delayed in answering some questions, but everything else was normal. Rebecca joked that he, of course, didn’t have all the symptoms he had been having while he was in the ED.
I took a minute to gather my thoughts before I told Ken and Rebecca what was going on. When I walked in the room Rebecca must have sensed something was wrong as she immediately put her book down, sat straight up and held Ken’s hand. I pulled up Ken’s CT scan images so that I could show them the abnormalities.