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Old 16th Jan 2014, 17:57
  #45 (permalink)  
alphamikeecho
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: The Frozen North
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As others have said, we all age at different rates.

For some of us the long history of commercial operations, followed by a retirement to general flying and instructing. With that experience you are probably safer than a lowish hours younger PPL. But as the ageing process catches up with some of us quicker than others.

I'm aware of a situation with someone who had an excellent run of committing aviation but unfortunately their memory started to deteriorate but yet no one told them this.

Except one year they went to a different AME who did a check on their memory and found that it wasn't 100%. (A mini mental state exam) The AME had come across them in social situations outwith the medical and knew that their memory was beginning to fail them. As it turned out they were diagnosed with cognitive impairment an early sign of dementia. Due to their baseline intelligence being superior to most, you may not have noticed unless you knew them well. The patient themselves was not aware that this was the case as they didn't see the problem and no one had ever pointed it out, even though all the locals knew there was a problem with their memory.

So sometimes we don't always know it's time to hang up our headset!

And maybe the other moral of the story is go to an AME you don't know socially!
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