The last ten threads I’ve started on this forum have been total crap, sorry.
I’ve started each one intending to do serious research on the topic, but the research never eventuated.
I’ve been to a psychiatrist and I infer from the tests that I have anterograde amnesia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterograde_amnesia
He didn’t say so, but those were the mental tests I failed, the conduit from short term to long term memory has shrunk to just about a third of the size it should be.
That’s the first symptom of early onset Alzheimers. Again, the doctor didn’t say this. Damage to the hypothalamus.
We’re trying a few other things. I’ve already ruled out stroke, large neoplasm, large cyst and brain shrinkage. Ruled out already with a CAT scan.
I’ll be investigating further with a PET scan on Friday 11th Aug. I’m very lucky to be able to get one that early.
What it means for the forum is that my ability to do research on any new topic has dwindled to nearly nothing. I can still comment based on my past knowledge, but can’t learn much that is new.
I’m having more of the “senior” moments as well. Today I forgot to close the fuel flap on the car after filling up. And forgot twice to feed the possum.
My sleep pattern is getting more chaotic, I never know when or for how long I will sleep, but always less than four hours at a stretch.
The psychiatrist upped my anti-depressant medication.
On top of that I’m recovering from a nasty cold that I caught last wednesday or thursday. mrs m caught the cold from me and had a very bad yesterday and today. Other friends of our of the same age are having severe medical problems – mrs m needs a hip replacement but won’t be able to get one for a year – a friend was in hospital a couple of days ago with what may have been ventricular fibrillation – another friend has some three letter acronym neural disease that I can’t remember the name of, (search web, FND, which I take to mean something similar to the doctors having NFI).
I, personally, have started to have problems picked up with tests of kidney, liver, lung, cholesterol, exhaustion, prostate, pre-diabetes etc. but none of which directly impacts my sedentary lifestyle.
Early onset Alzheimers is not something recorded in our family history, unless my father had it and hid it from the rest of us, he died at an age five years older than I am now of a blood circulatory problem.
Things brainwise have been getting worse for me rather fast and speeded up in the past two months. When I hit 50 I was delighted to be able to blame my memory problems (which I’ve had from childhood) on my advancing age. But now age really is the problem.
Did I tell you? Alzheimers medication starts with nitroglycerine. Then medication progresses to cholinesterase inhibitors. Cholinesterase inhibitors also include poisons esserine, organophosphate insecticides, and nerve gases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholinesterase_inhibitor
Just a little note, when I say “memory problems which I’ve had from childhood”, I mean that I’ve always had a poor “semantic memory” which was countered by my exceptionally good “procedural memory”.
From the web. “Procedural memory is defined as the memory system in charge of the encoding, storage, and retrieval of the procedures that underlie motor, visuospatial, and cognitive skills … Procedural memory describes our implicit knowledge of tasks that usually do not require conscious recall to perform them”. Damn useful for doing mathematics, because mathematics is procedural. Computer programming used to be procedural, until the bastards “object oriented” it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_memory
Semantic memory is memory “of facts that have meaning”. Such as faces and names.
That’s all.
I just wish I had the courage to keep learning music typesetting to finish the typesetting of a composition by a friend of mrs m, and three fugual rearrangements of popular pieces by me.