brain fog | Mama Sick

Results of My Memory Test

mamasick — Thu, 16 Jun 2016 17:47:41 +0000

Linking up with the Chronic Friday Linkup at Being Fibro Mom and the Weekend Blog Share at Hannah Spannah.

So many of us, whether it be from a disease or medication, experience impaired memory and concentration so I decided a couple of months ago that I needed to know why or where my problems were coming from. So I took a Neuropsychiatric or Neuropsychological test.

The test was about three and a half hours long and included being told a number of words and asking to repeat them, describing words shown to me, and a test on a computer where you had to figure out the changing patterns of cards. I also had to build towers from the largest to the smallest pieces while only moving one piece at a time, which I found the hardest part of the test.

My results said that my cognitive difficulties were most likely due to a combination of my physical and mental conditions along with the medication I was taking for said conditions. There was no evidence of dementia.

My psychiatrist’s recommendation was to minimize the use of my sleeping medication, the sedative that I take for anxiety, and the medication I take for my nausea. The medications that I take for bipolar disorder could also contribute to impaired memory.

So you mean everything I am taking to be a functional human being is playing havoc with my brain???

Suggested strategies for compensating included finding specific locations for important items, task lists, and tracking daily activities in a blog (hey!) or a notebook. I am pretty much already doing these things and still having difficulties.

I really don’t want to fiddle around with or lower my medication dosages so I guess I will have to keep dealing with these impairments with a sense of humor.

How do you deal with physical or mental and medication “brain fog”?

Do you have any funny stories about your memory troubles?

The post Results of My Memory Test first appeared on Mama Sick.

Stupid

mamasick — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 14:24:32 +0000

The idea for this post came to me about an hour ago and I knew I had to write it quickly for fear it would fall out of my brain.

Be it depression, physical symptoms or a combination thereof I have been feeling “stupid” for quite some time now. Often I feel I have nothing to do, I feel quite bored. Even though there are always things to do with all the media available to me, it’s as if my brain can’t handle anything remotely intellectual.

I used to read a book a week, now I can’t even read a light mystery, I just can’t get through it. I can’t concentrate on the news or anything on television that is quality. Yesterday I tried to watch “CBS Sunday News” and I couldn’t even make it through the opening. I am just lost. “Sex in the City”, “The Golden Girls” and game shows seem to be the only programs I can pay attention to.

Blogging has become extremely difficult for me, just writing this is a struggle. I am no longer the prolific, talented writer I used to be, and I watch my once successful blog fall down the Alexa Rank and feel powerless to stop it. I cannot churn out the content required to keep people coming to my site. I look back on my posts that were smartly written, that made people cry, that gave people hope, that educated others and I wonder if I will ever be able to do that again.

As I write this ideas come into my head but I lose them before they can even get written down. In seconds they are gone.

I am disappointed in this post. It is redundant and I can’t even think of the other ways to describe how displeased I am with it. The words don’t come.

Will I live this dumbed-down existence for the rest of my life?

I think I will stop here.

I guess no matter how I write my blog or how often, my goals for it remain the same. That people who are experiencing this will know that they are not alone, that I will educate others about how this feels and that I will receive support from people who read this.
The post Stupid first appeared on Mama Sick.