Hi all, I’m wondering if this is a recognised symptom, or could it be early dementia? My mum has only very recently been diagnosed, however in the past few months (even pre-diagnosis) my family and I have noticed her repeating herself. She will tell us the same story 2 or 3 times a day. I am very concerned about this, should I be? I know often if I’ve been busy/sleep deprived I do the same but I’m aware of it and I’ll say “did I already tell you this?”, but she doesn’t do that. It always comes across as brand new information.
Hello 1099jojo
I don’t pretend to be an expert on this but have tried to find out a little more about it as I have on occasion found myself repeating something I had just said. It is very mild in me and doesn’t cause me any problems at the moment but I was interested to find out if it is a known and recognised symptom. There doesn’t seem to be a great deal of information on this and most of what I’ve found has been in academic papers - not the easiest read - however if I am understanding it correctly there does seem to be an issue with repetition in some people with Parkinson’s but that dementia (in which this is symptom is more widely known) is not a pre requisite. It would seem to be linked to a deficit of motor speech control but their may also be some linguistic factors involved. The thinking seems to be that repetitive speech is a distinct disorder caused by progression of the condition that affects some people with Parkinson’s. It sort of made sense to me but please remember it is what I understood from what I read and whilst I don’t think this is wrong it is only my interpretation and is probably much more complex
Rightly or wrongly I got the impression that this is a symptom that hasn’t attracted much attention. Perhaps you might like to ring the help desk and sound them out because perhaps there is more out there than I have been able to find - my search was fairly superficial for my own interest really but since you flagged up the issue in your post I thought it worth posting how I understood it from the little I’ve read. If you do find out more or the helpdesk can signpost you to resources perhaps you would kindly post what you find out, I would be interested to know but don’t have an particular need to follow this up much at present.
It crossed my mind that you may be wondering about the implications of this in terms of living with Parkinon’s. Well I can’t really answer that since I don’t know but going on my experience of other conditions these things only become a real problem when it is constant or the sort of day when you don’t have the patience to keep hearing it or when it can quite frankly be embarrassing in certain situations because dealing with it can be stressful.
I must stress again that this is only how I see it ba\sed on what I have read and surmised with a bit of experience thrown in so please read it with that in mind and I am happy to be corrected if this is found to be ar all inaccurate. I hesitated to rep;y because of this but perhaps it will resonate with others and we can all begin to understand a little better.
Tot
