This morning I left my electronic fitness tracker on my wrist, in the nighttime writstband, while I cleaned the bathroom, and put away laundry.
I was suddenly distracted by a medical emergency with Dewey, my cockatiel, who was covered with blood. I whisked her to the sink to clean her up, and found no active bleeding, just a lot of feathers coming in. I guess she pulled on one or got it caught somehow. I bathed her, cuddled her in a towel, then returned her to her cage under a warm light bulb to help her dry and feel better. I gave a sigh of relief as she began preening herself, chirping, and eating. Whew, that was scary.
It was then I realized that I was no longer wearing my electronic fitness tracker. I assumed I had taken it off before bathing my bird, but it wasn't near the sink. Not near the towels, not near Dewey's cage. Then I thought, maybe I took it off while cleaning the bathroom. It wasn't in there either. I started to feel annoyed and upset with myself. Lately I've been forgetting where I put down my cell phone, and have had to go back to my bathroom in the morning to make sure the curling iron was turned off.
Short term memory loss, I thought. Now it begins. My concern turned into panic. No, no, this can't be happening. I have way too much left to do in my life. My grandchildren are only babies. It took me 50 years to find the LOML. I left the house to run an errand and drive through the nearby park, taking in the brilliant fall colors just to calm myself down.
When I got home, the LOML braved both the kitchen and bathroom garbage cans. No tracker. The darn thing was still synching to my phone, so we knew it was in the house. But where in the world did I put it? The freezer? Isn't that a typical hiding place for those with memory problems to put things? Not there. Not in the laundry, or the dog's dish or my shoes. Not pushed under the couch or the dresser by the vacuum today.
Finally, I looked up some helpful hints for finding a lost electronic fitness tracker. Yes, the manufacturer actually has such a webpage. Most of the usual places I had already checked. And yes, it was still synching, so it had to be in the house.
The final hint was to download a Bluetooth device locator onto my phone. Well, not an actual locator, but a meter that tells you which Bluetooth devices are communicating with your phone, and their signal strength. I loaded the software and turned on my laptop. It showed up right away, with a strong signal. Then, there was my tracker, a weak signal, but there!
As I walked away from the computer, the signal weakened, but the tracker's got stronger. As I walked further away from the computer the tracker got stronger and stronger, until I was standing in front of my closet. The closet in which I had placed freshly laundered clothes a few hours earlier. AH HA!
The hunt wasn't as easy as I expected. The tracker and its wristband were not just lying on the closet floor. In fact, the signal at the floor was weaker. Above the closet pole it was also weaker. Apparently the tracker was somewhere in the clothes. Eventually, I had to go through a bunch of items where the signal was the strongest, and there it was, my black wristband, securely fastened to the sleeve of a black shirt by the famous hook and loop fastener that was supposed to keep it around my wrist. Apparently my tracker had jumped ship and attached itself to the nearest arm and hung there, like a bat, snoozing.
My relief was twofold. First I was happy to find this expensive electronic gadget. Second, I realized that this was just "one of those things" on "one of those days" that had nothing to do with memory loss, short term or otherwise. In fact, I think I burned some new neural pathways playing detective and utilizing some new software. But perhaps the most important thing I learned today is that someone loves me enough to dump out two cans of smelly garbage to look for something we both thought I had mindlessly misplaced. And you can't complain about that.
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