I think I've mentioned a number of times I often forget what day or week (sometimes month) it is, and in the past during my worst brain fog years I've gotten lost in stores or driving around town and at one point felt I was making dangerous enough decisions in traffic to warrant legally becoming a non-driver. But a lot of that has gotten a bit better last couple of years, and it doesn't happen as much.
Well, it's happening again. A couple of months ago I couldn't remember which Walmart I was in between 3 towns and God knows how many Walmarts, took me nearly five minutes to reconstruct where I'd been just before and what I was doing that day (and what day it actually was). A couple of times lately I've out of the blue not remembered at all what building I'm standing in or how to get to a building I've been to several times.
I'm writing this down so I'll remember to tell the next medical professional or two over the next month that this is happening again. Brain scans have always turned out fine, and since this is familiar, I'm not really worried. I've been glitching like this since my daughter was about 8 years old, and that was way before the big brain crash and stuff. I'll never forget casually asking her one day if she knew what side of the road I was supposed to be driving on and then asking her if I was doing it right.
I think my pain level has been so high again lately that some of my light strings are flickering, like old Christmas tree lights when one bulb goes out and makes the connection bad for a whole length of string. Remember the old days, checking all the bulbs?
I haven't really said that much. Yes, I keep mentioning arms and hands. I'm still doing stuff, still getting my chores around the house done, still driving and getting groceries, still writing and playing minecraft and stuff. I'm sort of even doing more for longer, yay! It's nice being more capable. But I guess it's pretty overwhelming. I think what struck me was getting lost in my own house this last week. It's not the same as walking from one room to another and not remembering what you were just thinking (which is a legitimate and very common phenomenon that has to do with moving through doorways psychologically). I mean actually not remembering which direction to go to walk out of my house or something. It's one thing to get the wrong drawer when I want a fork, or open the fridge when I'm really wanting to open my oven, but getting lost navigating over a very short and extremely familiar space to a door I can't remember is another.
All my sensations get mixed up when I'm like this, too. I can't tell if I'm really hungry or not (saying this very seriously because I suddenly can't remember sometimes if I just ate a meal, and I have to watch my blood sugar) (I used to do this when I was working in the old days, too, try to punch back out for lunch 30 minutes after I'd punched back in from lunch), or getting whether I'm feeling hot and cold switched. I noticed this winter I kept feeling really hot until I put a sweater on, or really chilled until I took the sweater off. I've never done that one before. This is life with a glitchy nervous system. Doesn't even matter what it is. I'm positive for so many things that contribute to it- lyme, epstein-barr, bartonella, the car wreck, bell's (they're leaning more toward viral cause now), CMV, fibro... yes, we're all tired of hearing about it. But you know how like people wonder what they're old age is going to be like? That's what I'm saying NO to with everything in my power.
I think it's just that underneath everything, my arms and hands hurt so continuously and so much that I think I just turn my brain off so I don't have to feel it. It's like shutting down unnecessary programs to shunt off incoming overload so I can stay focused on what I need to do in the moment.
Need to try going back to bed now. I was so exhausted earlier that I conked and took a 4 hour nap, which is a dumb thing to do on the eve of setting the clocks forward.
~this morning~
-_-
And even with all that, we slept in. We never sleep in like this. I think it's the zombie fog. (And you can see Scott is kid proofing the deck so Bunny won't go plummeting to her grisly death.)
Even after all that junk I wrote last night up there, my brain is still zooming around way more than it used to. I like it.
Between the zombie fog and @bonenado computering, there's no way I can pull a youtube. See ya.
