Dear Manang,
Is there a serious disease that has absent mindedness as a symptom? My son is so forgetful that he has to be reminded of his every step. He needs to be told to brush his teeth or change his shirt. Sometimes, his shoes don’t match. We can’t rely on him to do simple tasks like closing the door when he leaves for school or hold the keys for the house. He seems to misplace them or forget where he put them. I am tired of sounding like a nag but getting used to constantly nudging him. But he is a fine kid and is brilliant at times. Is he sick?
Marisol of San Luis, Baguio City
Dear Marisol,
Absent mindedness is being forgetful. I will play boring with you and quote from a website human-memory.net, “The cerebral cortex plays a key role in memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language and consciousness. It is divided into four main regions or lobes, which cover both hemispheres: the frontal lobe (involved in conscious thought and higher mental functions such as decision-making, particularly in that part of the frontal lobe known as the prefrontal cortex, and plays an important part in processing short-term memories and retaining longer term memories which are not task-based); the parietal lobe (involved in integrating sensory information from the various senses, and in the manipulation of objects in determining spatial sense and navigation); the temporal lobe (involved with the senses of smell and sound, the processing of semantics in both speech and vision, including the processing of complex stimuli like faces and scenes, and plays a key role in the formation of long-term memory); and the occipital lobe (mainly involved with the sense of sight).” I simply want to say that all of us are disfigured somewhere. Your son might just have something right in his brain that makes him such. You say he is a fine kid in terms of perhaps showing his affection for you. You have much to be thankful about.
We are all different,
Manang
Dear Manang,
My sister is the most difficult person to get along with because she refuses to see the dentist and get her teeth fixed. She wears dentures that are so loose they fall when she speaks and pre molars that are already flattened and blackened by decay. She says she’s afraid and just puts up with the pain or doesn’t mind it when her lips are swollen because of the infection. Is there a remedy to her fear?
Nezendra of Lualhati, Baguio City
Dear Nezendra,
It must have been some awesome fear in her childhood memory that makes your sister so afraid of dentists. Well. She’s not the first or last to die with blue and black teeth. Find out if you can why she is so scared by asking her to remember her bad experience. When you bring a person back to the source of the fear, you can help them out of the rut. This is by understanding why the monster is so huge in the dental clinic. I pray her dentist wasn’t a man because other malicious thoughts are playing there. Dental care is important too.
Patience my dear,
Manang
