Healthy progress

When I was not walking as well as I am now, being dizzy and having a lot of knee pain at the time, I set my step count goal to 3,500, which may seem really low, but I was lucky to reach it maybe 3-4 days a week at most. After the gel shots in my knees and the physical therapy for the dizziness (primarily caused by a malfunction in the Vestibulo-ocular Reflex (VOR) [where you have a dysfunction in turning the head and focusing on a point at the same time] with a little Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV) [where tiny calcium crystals build up in an area of the inner ear where they should not be, causing dizziness], I'm walking better. I keep a collapsible cane with me, but I haven't been using one full-time anymore. I told myself when I met my goal for seven days a week, I'd move up the goal. So... On six days last week, I was over 4.000 steps. On four, I was over 5,000, and on one, 6,000. I'm going to move it up in 500 step increments--so up to 4,000 for now, and then if I can get it up to 4,000 consistently, I'll move it up again. I'd like to at least get up to 5,000 steps a day. Wish me luck.

BTW. I got a call from my neurologist Friday afternoon and he'd gotten the report back from my MRI early. Everything looked normal. In addition to the dizziness, we'd been checking on the very frustrating memory issues I've been having and trouble finding words, especially names of things/nouns. He is under the impression that it is not my brain, or even ageing, but rather side-effects of some of my medication, which is unfortunate, because it is extremely important that I stay on said medications, and if I were to try to find an alternative, it would be bad, as what I'm on is working very well and it can take ages to find the right medicine otherwise. He said that unless it gets markedly worse, he wouldn't recommend pulling me off of them. If it does, then we could reconsider or put me on additional medication (something I'd like to avoid if I can). But I'd asked for an evaluation because I was afraid it was a kind of degenerative aphasia, which is a form of dementia, and at least we've ruled that out. So yay!

Well, I screwed up

Apparently, I really thought I'd transcribed the notes from the last Cthulhu game, and that we didn't actually play last Sunday when we did. I guess it's understandable as we've been sick and Brenda had to go out of state one weekend, but really! And we were at a point we could have maybe finished the Elizabethan adventure we're in right now. Oh, well. Instead, we're watching 'The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina' and 'Perfect Harmony'. I'll get the notes back on track, but needless to say, I'm embarrassed, although with my memory I'm surprised I didn't do this earlier. I was telling the gamemaster that I didn't have to do the notes, and he didn't say anything, mainly because I tend to get annoyed at him for reminding me of my bad memory. Sigh. Okay, he's on a phone call but it sounds like he'll be back in a moment, and we'll continue watching, so I should go. Just wanted to check in and vent about my lapse.

Blissful coolness

So, I'm broke, but I managed to pay for the air conditioning to be fixed, so things are much more pleasant in the house.  It was funny, I don't see any reason to tell YKWIA this, as he would be terribly offended, but when I called to see if I could get the fan motor that was maybe one tick up from the cheapest part the tech quoted, the lady said that he'd actually given us an estimate on an original Coleman part that is factory-authorised, but knowing money was an issue, had given us the quote based on a senior discount.  So Tuesday came and I left my debit card with YKWIA and apparently the fan blade itself was so rusted in place that it wouldn't move, so the tech had to get that order brought over, which took awhile, but he got it fixed.  I guess that's what burned out the motor in the first place--it rusted over the winter because when we first turned it on in May, it pretty much worked for just a few hours if that. When I got home, I asked how much more the fan blade was.  'I don't know. I just handed him your debit card.' That struck fear in me, as while I had extra money in my account, it was earmarked for my car insurance.  So I went to my e-mail and it turns out that the tech did the complete repair for the original quote, without charging for the blade at all.  Yay! I really liked them--we went with Synergy, and the tech's name was Zach Taylor and he did an excellent job.  I have to thank my former boss for pointing me to them--she'd heard an ad and directed me to them.  That night, I didn't know what to do--I had to sleep under a cover and I wasn't drenched in sweat that morning, nor did I have the 'break-out-in-perspiration-as-soon-as-you-get-out-of-the-shower' issue.  But because I'd kind of gotten too used to that, I didn't sleep super well that night.  I did last night, though.  Yes!

Yesterday was mostly about medical testing.  I did work from noon to 4:30 pm, but I had an EEG at 7:30 am and an MRI of the brain at 10 am.  I had gone to my neurologist concerned over periodic dizziness (I think now that it's vestibular, but we needed to rule out other concerns).  I also expressed concern that my memory issues have gotten worse, and while it's probably normal ageing, I've done a lot of replacing words that I have had a hard time finding with the opposite, stuff like that.  Now I have ADHD, the inattentive types, so maybe it's just partly that, and as we get older there's more information to juggle.  But I've had several untreated concussions, and my family doctor and I wanted to rule out any chance of dementia or early Alzheimer's, a personal fear of mine given my great-grandmother's battle against the latter.

Anyway, the EEG--which was quite interesting, by the way--was negative for any of that.  My brain's not slowing down, even though it sometimes seems that way.  And the MRI was fine, too.  I came home yesterday and looked at the MRI scans they'd given me at Lexington Diagnostic Center.  Not that I know how to read an MRI at all, but you can kind of look for light or dark areas that don't fit the rest of it, and I didn't see anything.  This morning my neurologist's office called and said it was fine.  I did get put on a beta blocker that is good for essential tremor, a benign tremor that can make your hands shake when you hold a spoon or write, or hold a letter, or even a phone, say if you've got it above you in bed. :) Not that you should be lying in bed looking at your phone when you should be asleep, right?  Anyway, it's a small dose and it's good for anxiety, too, according to my psychiatrist.  It does seem to be helping.  Otherwise, I got a clean bill of neurological health.  I just am going to have to accept that my memory is not what it once was (and in truth, it was good when I was young, I didn't have to take notes in high school, but I dealt with a lot less information).  Given my experiences with anxiety and depression, it's no wonder I've had some impact on daily life.  And I tend to compare myself to YKWIA, who has an eidetic memory, rather than say, your average 51-year-old. :)

Today I won the parking behind the building (which is funny, as I'd reserved it yesterday since I was coming from my appointments, so I'm a little spoiled--I have parked there two days in a row), so I took Samantha, my co-worker to her car both days, but today after that I went over to the pharmacy for my pen needles (which are a pain to get anywhere else if you don't have the prescription on you, like you can shoot up heroin out of an insulin pen, thank you, Kroger).  Then I went and got YKWIA from our friend's, the one he's helping who is battling cancer.  Since my schedule has shifted a half-hour earlier and I hadn't had to go to my car on the shuttle, even with the trip to the pharmacy we were home about 5:30 pm.  He was really beat, so he went to bed, and he's still there.  I'm going to wake him in a bit to take his medicine.  I ate, and then realised I was pretty tired, too.  I worked very hard and very steadily today.  I like my new job, but I can't ever say I'm bored.  So I settled down for awhile with the cat about 7 pm after I'd fed the animals and brought the dog in--who actually wandered around the yard and acted nearly normal.  I woke up at 9:45, started some bread making (now that the temperature and humidity are back to where they should be), filled the dishwasher, put away plastic dishes, washed the ones in the sink, took out the trash and recyclables, and took the Herbie and Rosie (the trash and recycling containers, respectively--we name ours here in Lexington) out to the kerb, and generally straightened up a bit.  Now I'm listening to Pandora and spending some time on the computer.  We're about an hour from bread.  The cat's on my bed again.  I think I'm going to put the flowered quilt back on the bed, as I don't have to worry about sweat stains now.  But that might be a task for tomorrow morning--the cat is quite happy and quiet at the moment, and we like to keep it that way.  So I have a task to do online and then I may lie back down till the bread machine beeps and listen to music.  My phone turned off, as I let its charge run down, so I'm playing the music on the computer.  I may do some brain exercises that go with an application on my phone that are pretty challenging, too.  Just to help out on the memory issue--which I do fine with the memory tasks on that.  So maybe it literally is just in my head.  I don't know.

Alright, I am definitely getting some water and finishing up here.  I also should work on a book review by the end of the week.  And I just got another published.  Yay!

Good night.

Hope for easing psychological trauma's effect on the mind

Memory Reconsolidation and What Albert Ellis Knew All Along

Like me, John Medina grew up as an Air Force brat in the Cold War. We're also both interested in psychology, mental health, and social sciences (although I took the sociology route in school). Unlike me, he is a 'developmental molecular biologist with special research interests in the isolation and characterisation of genes involved in human brain development and the genetics of psychiatric disorders' (that's quoted from Wikipedia). He is also the author of several books, including Brain Rules, and writes a blog in which the following post caught my attention, as it deals with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and memory. It was shared by Buffy in my news reader:

The wars currently being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan represent one reason to study PTSD, and in doing so, it could lead to new discoveries which could help both the military and civilian communities.

Many things concern me about our military operations in those theaters, but one of them touches on a professional interest—the growing incidence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). There are 3 reasons that prick up my research instincts, all springing from this asymmetric warfare.

• First, there are no real “fronts” to many of these operations. As a result, soldiers who used to be able to sit comfortably in the rear (often called the “tail”) are now as exposed to the hazards of combat as those charged with fighting (often called the “tooth”). Consequently, the pool of soldiers who are potential candidates for PTSD has increased. This means the research cohort is getting larger and increasingly better defined.

• Second, soldiers are returning into these asymmetric environments multiple times for very long periods. This provides an opportunity to study the mental health effects of combat over a sustained period of years—valuable for countries such as Somalia and parts of Uganda, which have been in a continuous state of war for decades.

• Third, the number of women exposed to combat is increasing. Since there is growing evidence that men and women process stress very differently, these populations represent valuable research opportunities to ask and answer sex-based questions regarding the effects of combat on behavioral outcomes.

But scientists have found a way to re-set the fear response by using comfort during a window of memory reconsolidation. This discovery could lead to new ways of counseling those exposed to war, rape, and other experiences that lead to PTSD. Read the column to see how the research worked, and what their findings were. It really is fascinating that we could have a 'rewind' button of sorts in dealing with traumatic memories.

One reason to get a normal amount of sleep

Insomnia may shrink your brain, scans show: Chronic lack of sleep linked to lower gray matter density
I rarely have insomnia (although it does happen on occasion), but I generally don't get enough sleep, although I've been doing much better now that I get home at a reasonable time at night. Still, for years I operated on about five to six hours' sleep, and it wasn't enough. I hope I haven't shrunk any grey matter--I need all the brainpower I can get, since I'm ageing and I'm not sure my brain's ever really been wired right anyway, especially with the ADD.

Speaking of ageing, cognition, and memory, and comic strips, for that matter, a co-worker showed me a great comic by Regan today and I laughed mightily:

Have a good night. I'm off tomorrow afternoon so I plan to pick up some items at the library (a CD and the next two Dresden Files books), but also do some cleaning and work on the game notes. I'll probably blog, too, though. :)

A fun game

Despite having memory issues at times, I'm pretty good at the 'Memory Game', where you uncover pictures and match them. Well, I happen to have studied Greek, so I was happy when someone made a free Greek Alphabet Memory Game. Maybe if I play these sorts of things enough, my memory will improve.