Is it Alzheimer's, Dementia, or ordinary Aging?

Adrian always suspects he has Alzheimer's or Dementia, though he cannot remember the actual words and keeps asking me what they are.  When he's having a good day, I don't think he has either one because his sense of humor and analytic abilities are strong.

But too often he cannot actually have a conversation with me because he starts to say something and then can't remember what it was.  This happened last night.

"I figured out that I love you," he said.

"Good, I love you too."

"Don't you want to know how I figured it out?  If you don't, then you don't love me."

There's that sense of humor.  "Sure," I said, "how did you figure it out?"

But he was unable to tell me.  He had "lost" the thought again.  We tried for a while to regenerate the conversation, but to no avail.

I try to keep our conversations going by telling Adrian things rather than asking him questions he can't answer, but it gets lonely at times.  It is worse for him because he feels isolated socially.

It doesn't really matter what we call it:  aging, dementia or Alzheimer's.  He suffers nonetheless.