He remembers every appointment but can't plan a simple day out anymore. Is that the stroke?

#1Moira G.(Joined Mar 2026 · 20 posts)September 29, 2026, 9:04 pm

Me again, the husband, not Mum. Seventeen months now and physically he's in a good place. Walking well, arm useful, even talking about the car again (that thread is ongoing in our kitchen).

His memory is fine. Better than mine, honestly. He knows every appointment, every grandchild's birthday, what the physio said in June.

But last weekend he said he'd plan a day out for us, our anniversary, and it fell apart in a way I can't explain. He'd looked up a garden two hours away but not checked it was open. Didn't think about where we'd eat. Hadn't thought about the fact that he gets exhausted after an hour on his feet. When I asked, very gently, he got flustered and then angry and said I was "testing him".

Before the stroke he organised everything. Holidays, the house move, all of it. Is this the stroke, or is it me expecting too much, or is it something else? I don't want to make a fuss about a day out if it's nothing.

#2Geoffswife(Joined Jan 2025 · 38 posts)September 30, 2026, 8:37 am

Not nothing, and not you. Geoff is the same with anything that has more than three steps. Ask him a fact and he's sharp as ever. Ask him to put the steps in order and it goes to pieces, and he gets cross in exactly the way you describe because he can feel it going.

We were told it was the planning part of the brain. I write lists now and he ticks things off. Not glamorous but there are fewer rows.

#3mattw_tbi(Joined Jun 2025 · 19 posts)October 2, 2026, 10:11 pm

This is what got me after the head injury and it's the hardest thing to explain to people because you look fine. The clinic called it executive function. Memory for facts can be perfectly okay while planning, sequencing, juggling options and spotting what you've missed are knocked. It's like the files are all there but the person who organises the files has gone part time.

Mine improved a lot with proper cognitive rehab, mostly strategies rather than brain training games. Checklists, breaking a job into steps on paper, doing the planning in the morning when I'm fresh. The site's piece on cognitive rehabilitation after brain injury is honest about what the evidence does and doesn't show, worth reading before you ask for it.

Also, the anger. That was mine too. When you can feel something slipping and someone asks you a question about it, it feels like being caught out. Not a defence, just an explanation.

#4keithb57(Joined Oct 2024 · 51 posts)October 4, 2026, 11:26 am

I'd mention it to the GP or stroke team, not as a complaint about him but as an observation. Mine only got picked up because my wife wrote three examples on a piece of paper and handed it over at a review. Doctors can't see this in a ten minute chat any more than your friends can.

#5Moira G.(Joined Mar 2026 · 20 posts)October 9, 2026, 7:50 pm

Thank you all. Matt, the files and the person who organises the files is exactly it. I read it out to him and he went quiet and then said "yes, that's what it feels like", which is the most he's said about it in a year.

I did Keith's piece of paper. Three examples, no adjectives. The GP has referred him back to the stroke team for a cognitive assessment, waiting list unknown, but it's moving.

And we planned the anniversary together, on paper, him with the pen. He chose the garden, I checked the opening times, he found the café. We went yesterday. It was lovely.