Early in the game for many people with AD, they lose an understanding
of sequences, so that might be adding to the memory problem. In other
words, they stop understanding that Channel 4 is ahead of Channel 7 on
the dial, that 2 pm comes after 1 pm and before 3 pm, that Monday is
before Tuesday and after Sunday, that if its August, next month is
September etc.

It leads to all kind of practical problems in every day living. It
took me a while to clue into the fact that this had happened to my
MIL. When the lightbulb went on  over my head, I pulled out a calendar
and discovered she couldn't understand it at all - she couldn't follow
the matrix format and understand the sequence of days of the week and
dates and how they correlate. If you showed her today's date, and
asked her to show you one week from today, or three days ago she
couldn't do it. Same thing with medication charts where the time was
down one side and the days of the week across the top (i.e. where you
can check off when you've taken your meds). Just incomprehensible to
her - and this at a stage in the illness where she seemed quite
together on other fronts.

Around the same time, clocks became quite a mystery to her - she could
look at a clock and tell you the time, but really didn't get what it
meant - for example, even if she KNEW it was 2 pm, and her appointment
was at 3 pm, she couldn't figure out that that meant she was supposed
to be somewhere in an hour, much less reason out what time to leave
her house to get there on schedule. Concurrent with this was a loss of
"feel" for the passage of time - which is probably from the short term
memory loss. You could leave the room for 5 minutes or 5 hours, and
she wouldn't really know how long you'd been gone - so if she was told
something would happen in 15 minutes, she had no clue what that really
felt like.

Finding shows on TV became impossible - she couldn't understand how
the TV guide worked at all - after all, you needed to understand the
sequence of days and times AND how channels worked to find what you
wanted. She got into this sort of  permanent NOW mindset (very Zen) -
she thought if she could see it in the guide, it should be on, and no
amount of explaining would help her understand that a show that is
listed on Tuesday at 1 pm can't be watched on Friday at midnight. She
also couldn't get to the channel she wanted as she had no idea that if
she was on Channel 12 and wanted Channel 13, she just had to flip one
number on the dial - just no understanding of sequences at all. I
remember having a conversation with her about up and down a number
sequence (on her remote, there were channel changing buttons with
arrows for up (increasing numbers) and down (decreasing numbers), and
I might have well been speaking Swahili. She couldn't comprehend that
if she pushed the up button the channels would cycle  7, 8, 9, 10 and
if she pushed the down it would go 7, 6, 5, 4

If you start to really think about the loss of understanding of
ordered sequences, you can see how it impacts things beyond time and
handling money. How about dressing or bathing or cooking, where you
have a list of things you have to do in a certain order?

We take a lot for granted about the way our brain operates when its
intact, and its very hard to fathom what someone else is going through
when basic functions are on the fritz. Its easy to get frustrated and
assume the person is just being obtuse or difficult.

Mary G.