HomeNeuropsychologyCognitive decline
The forgetting has started to change the house.
Telling ordinary forgetting from a pattern that repeats, with tests rather than impressions. Always in person, at your home in Granada.
How it works
- What the house sees. Memory, orientation, managing alone: what actually happens on an ordinary day, from you and from whoever lives with you. They see things you cannot see from the inside.
- The tests, in person. Standardised tests with the physical material and the timing they require, given at your home in Granada. Being in the house also shows me things about the day to day that no test does.
- Reading the results honestly. Your results against the norms for your age and education, read alongside sleep, mood, medication and hearing, all of which move these numbers and none of which are dementia.
- The report and what comes next. A written report and a conversation explaining it in plain English: what can be worked on, what is worth watching, and what belongs with a doctor.
Managing a parent's memory from another country
The suspicion almost always reaches the family before it reaches the person. Somebody repeats a question three times over one meal, gets tangled in paperwork they used to handle alone, or stops going to a place they went to without thinking. At home it gets discussed quietly and covered in public, and months pass without anyone naming it.
Doing that at a distance is harder again. You get the cheerful version on a call, you visit twice a year and notice a change that everyone who sees them daily has stopped noticing, and every attempt to raise it becomes an argument you have to end before you fly back. If your parent lives in Spain and you do not, there is often nobody obvious to ask either.
An assessment does not decide anything on its own, and it is not the same thing as a diagnosis. What it gives you is a measurement: how memory, attention and thinking are working right now, in figures a doctor in any country can read, and a written record to compare against if things change.
What you get out of it
Not a verdict. Something factual to work from, in your own language.
- You know which parts of thinking are affected and which are intact, and it is rarely all one thing.
- The family stops guessing, and the disagreement about whether this is really happening has something underneath it.
- You have a written report a doctor here or at home can read and act on.
- If nothing is wrong, you have that in writing too, and a baseline to compare against later.
Who it is for
If you have noticed that you no longer remember as you did, or if your family has begun to see it — and either you are living here without the doctor who knew you for twenty years, or you are trying to manage it for a parent from another country.
- What is happening day to day: memory, orientation, managing on your own.
- Whether this fits ordinary ageing, the effect of sleep, mood or medication, or a pattern that needs following.
- A written report, in English or Spanish, that a doctor here or at home can read.
- What to say to the family, and which arguments to stop having.
Who it is not for
It is not a medical diagnosis: that belongs to the doctor. It is not a screening questionnaire, and it does not promise to slow anything down. The assessment cannot be done by video call, and I will not pretend otherwise to make it easier to arrange.
When it makes sense to get in touch. When the forgetting has started to change what happens at home, at work or with paperwork; when a doctor has asked for a neuropsychological assessment; or when the family has begun quietly covering for it.
The first consultation is free. It is there for you to tell me what is going on and for me to see whether I can help, with no obligation to continue.Book the free consultation →
Frequently asked questions
Where does the assessment for cognitive decline take place?
Always in person, at your home in Granada. The tests need physical material and direct observation, so this part is never done by video call.
My mother is in Granada and I am not. Can I arrange this from abroad?
Yes, and families often do. Your own part — the conversation about what you have noticed, and the session where I go through the report — can be by video call, while the testing itself is always in person, at her home in Granada. The report reaches you in English.
Is this the memory test the doctor did?
No. A short screening at a surgery takes a few minutes and tells you whether to look further. This looks at each cognitive area in depth, compares your results with the norms for your age and education, and produces a written report.
My father does not want to be tested. What do I do?
That is common, and it is worth taking seriously rather than working around. Bring it to the free first consultation: the resistance is usually about what a result would mean rather than about the tests, and how it is proposed makes a large difference.
Will a report written in Spain be any use to a doctor in the UK?
The report sets out the tests used and the results in the standard international format, so a professional elsewhere can read it and carry on from there. I cannot guarantee how a particular institution treats a document from abroad, but the content is not tied to Spain, and it can be written in English or in Spanish.
Does it matter that Spanish is not my parent's first language?
It matters a great deal, and it is one of the reasons this should not be done casually. Testing somebody in a language they learned late measures the language as much as the thing we are trying to see. Tests are chosen with that in mind, and the report says where language affected a result.
What is the first consultation like?
The first consultation —the initial conversation, not the assessment— is free and we do it by phone or by video call. It is there for us to meet, put some order on what is going on and see whether an assessment is what you need. You do not need to arrive with an answer.