I can't remember my words anymore.
I am hoping this is temporary. I can't remember when it started. Maybe a year ago, two years? I'm not sure. I just know I live like Porky Pig in my head half the time: "That's unbelie... that's unbelie...argghh....that's just crazy!"
I ask questions like people with dementia ask. "What's that phrase for getting your fish hooked?" Answer: Set the hook. I still can't remember that and had to ask someone again. Where's that place I went to in California once for a week? It starts with a B? Answer: Balboa Island.
I can't bring up the word escalate so I use the word accelerate, which is not what I mean. Whenever I want to say extraction, my mind substitutes imperfection. Every time. I repeat things like telling my husband we have to leave the leftover fresh fish for our neighbor when we leave.
"You've told me that 3 times already," he tells me. I have?! What's wrong with me?
I've been wondering: do I have early onset dementia? Or is my brain frozen from email/faxing/writing/working/husband with M.S./menopause/stress?
Do I have a brain tumor from using my cellphone? It feels like a brain tumor.
Or do I have lethologica?
Lethologica, I've discovered, is a psychological disorder that inhibits an individual's ability to articulate his or her thoughts by temporarily forgetting key words, phrases or names in conversation.
Some background. Lethologica was first identified as a serious, debilitating disorder by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung in 1913. Detailed studies of the disorder were first carried out by American psychiatrists in the 1950's. Current research identifies the ailment as extremely prevalent but also highly variable in its severity of manifestation. According to the American Psychiatric Association, "9 out of 10 Westerners will suffer some form of Lethologica during their lifetimes." 9 out of 10?!
Well I guess that rules out that our new technology is causing it.
I have a friend in Honolulu who had such a severe case of memory loss several years ago, she assumed it was early onset dementia. She set up a lunch with me as an informal goodbye. She figured her brain was leaving her and she was about to enter that gray land of dementia and probably wouldn't recognize me in a year or two. She was going to follow up with Doctors. I need to give her a call and find out what they discovered, if anything.
I thought I was an isolated incident. But I work in the Healthcare field and read Emergency room chart notes daily. And I've started seeing patients coming into the E.R. complaining of not being able to find their words. They are concerned they have had a stroke or some other neurological disorder. The doctors invariably find nothing wrong with them, give them some ativan and send them home.
My sister repeats her stories 2 or 3 times when she is telling one. My father hasn't had the best memory for the last decade. But he's 73. Is this genetic? I don't know.
According to Wikipedia, Lethologica can be classified as a lifestyle disease which is also affected by individual personality traits. These factors have been shown to affect the temporal lobe which in turn causes the sporadic functioning of episodic and semantic memory capacities. Lethologica afflicts in a manner almost opposite to that of other memory disorders such as Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia in that strenuous mental exercise can precipitate an onset of memory loss.
Recent studies demonstrating a close relationship between lethologica and disordered pharyngeal phase of swallowing have made some neurologists postulate that the disease [disease?] may well affect the X and/or XII cranial nerves, in addition to the temporal lobe.
Unfortunately, no effective treatments for the disorder exists.
I'll go to my doctor and see if I can't find a reason for this. But I'm thinking I might just be on my own with this one. And my brain might need a significant break to re-boot itself. How do you put your brain on vacation?
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rated with hugs
What do you mean you don't have a user manual? Damn....
:D
Rated.
Good luck with that.
Lezlie
I find myself forgetful in small ways as do most of my friends in their late 40's early 50's. My husband tends to ask my daughter and me the same things on a daily basis. Some of it is worrisome. But I also know that unfortunately so much of it is normal.
My friend's husband is 53. He was just diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's and believe me, his symptoms are much, much different.
Of course you should see your doctor, but chances are, it's what we are all experiencing at this age. ~r
♥R
"Lethologica"- new vocaulary word for me! :) *R*
When I finally remembered it, I would repeat it over and over to myself. It took awhile but its now at the point where I can usually pull it up after just a brief moment of my brain slipping into neutral.
I used to have such a full vocabulary. Now I feel like I'm on a lexicological diet.
Alzheimers and dementia have crossed my mind, too. (Ironically, I just had to pause to come up with dementia.)
Memory has never been my strong suit but, now that my words are deserting me, its so much more frustrating.
A few years ago, I went to my ortho to check on leg cramps. A friend told me to ask about 'Lympho-edema'. I'd never heard of it and didn't write it down, of course.
For two hours in the waiting room, I tried and tried to remember the term. Couldn't come close.
I got all of the vowels, though: It was 'empho'.....something...and 'eneema' something....What was it? Absolutely could NOT remember.
Once in the examination room, again waiting for another hour trying to recall, it came to me like a flash. Whew! I remembered!
Try to imagine the look on the doctor's face when I asked him this in all seriousness and angst:
Dr. Monwell.....Do you think I could possibly have .....wait for it...... Nympho Anemia?
True story, sadly.
Sorry, a second joke (an old one), you'll be able to go to the doctor to have him look at your brain and then tell everyone he didn't find anything. My uncle told this joke a lot after he fainted and hit his head.
I suspect this is a temporary symptom that will mysteriously go away just like it came.
First of all, Jung was a fraud….a maniac. A genius, yes, but a real maniac, in the literal sense of the word. Take a look at his recently published private diaries if you want to see what I am talking about here.
That said, we are all suffering from the same ailment that causes these symptoms. Over-stimulation.
We take in too much media. We know many more words than our ancestors knew and we do not use the ancient, time-tested techniques for mental regeneration, such as mediation and other consciousness stimulating relaxation techniques.
First of all, take a look at your medicine cabinet read up on the side effects of the medicines you’re taking. Selective amnesia is a side effect of many drugs. Virtually all pain pills cause some kind of short duration amnesia, to the point where some of the most powerful pain medications are actually called amnesics because they induce short-term amnesia.
One of the side effects of the amnesics is a permanent but minimal loss of mental acuity. I suffered this myself after my cancer surgery in 2003, when I was given amnesics after the procedure so that I would not remember the incredible post-operative pain I went through. (This doesn’t work as well as they think it does….ask anyone who has been through it.) These drugs are also used in trauma cases and, if administered with 72 hours of a traumatic event such as rape, can prevent the onset of post-traumatic stress syndrome. You remember the event itself but are dissociated from the emotional reactions to the event. Actually, in some cases, you don’t remember anything at all, which isn’t good from a legal standpoint.
With the prevalence of these drugs in our society, it’s not surprising that more people are suffering such memory lapses. With the publicity being given to Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, it’s not surprising that we are more sensitive to these episodes because they seem like symptoms of these greatly feared disorders.
The fact that your husband has been diagnosed with M.S. is a very particular stressor that often causes the close relatives of the M.S. patient to become more self-observant and this closer self-observation makes you more sensitive to minor memory loss.
The aging process itself also causes us to become more self-observant as our aches and pains start to add up to actual disabilities.
Forgetting the names of people, places and things is neither uncommon nor indicative of any specific ailment, except for the ones that enterprising physicians are making up to cover these conditions.
Forgetting the people, places or things themselves is another matter.
I am going to guess that you are a visual thinker because it is more common for visual thinkers to recognize objects without connecting them to the words that describe those objects. Auditory thinkers – people who think in words rather than pictures – tend to remember the names of objects better because they have to form stronger associations between objects and their names in order to function effectively and efficiently.
There’s now a whole new class of drugs that are known to improve memory and cognition, many of which are gray market preparations and there are number of herbal supplements that have a similar effect, beginning with Ginkgo Biloba and certain amino acids.
A visit to a good nutritionist might be in order.
And I just remembered that I forgot to take my ginkgo today.
Actually none of you will give a damn butt, it is this:
"But he's 73."
I used to think that people in their 60s were old.
Then I thought that about people in their 70s.
I am seventy goddamn two years old and I am still TOTALLY active is all respects, including SEX!!
I enjoy watching jeopary~~the ONLY daytime tv I ever watch.
I find that I have to search for some replies which used to pop up imstantly.
Who know, maybe this is just the way it is.
WOW!!~~But he's 73.
WTF!! I just did a blog yesterday about what I want to do for the next few years.
Of course, as is typical around here, very few even read it.
I really get pissed when I see these bullshit things about "But he's 73."
I'm not going to say that I'm sorry. I'm 72 butt, I am not fucking dead.
I used to spend some time following the thread of an idea to think of a particular word or concept or book or actress or title or song tune or whatever. There were always people who didn't bother with this; I remember as a child being chastised for such perseverance by those who weren't so persistent and linear. But I was famous for following little cognitive leads to get to the answer and sometimes it would take a whole hour or day before I would, seemingly in the midst of another conversation, shout out the coveted answer.
Today, I just look it up on the internet. Sitting around watching a tv show and asking, "Oh that actor looks familiar; what else did he star in?" causes someone to lazily type in a few words on their laptop and come up with the answer. This happens all the time. Recently I wrote a master's thesis and used dictionary.com constantly, mainly for the thesaurus part. I had a certain word in mind but couldn't think of it so I just typed in a synonym and came up with a list that had my word in it. Voila!
I figure that that "following the thread" I mentioned earlier, that thing I did to figure out an answer, has some physiological manifestation. Surely there is cognitive action--neurons flooding with electricity reinforcing pathways?--when we try to think of obscure things. And the less we do that, the less able we are to do that? So eventually even the ordinary, less obscure things we need to retrieve are just harder to grasp?