darkemeralds

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Neuro

This wanted to be one of those posts where I complain about my job, but the problem isn't my job, it's my brain. I'm losing my ability to act like the kind of person who can do the kind of job I have.

It's not a rant-post obliquely glorifying my unique brilliance compared to the dull plodding minds of my coworkers. Nor, conversely, is it a guilt-post, confessing my secret fear that I'm not smart enough and I Will Be Found Out. Everybody's a Special Snowflake and everybody's flawed.

What it is, I think, is the beginning of an inquiry into either a developing neurological disorder or a basic thinking style which I can no longer cover up. I'm not sure which.

This inquiry might lead into the MRI tunnel (the implications of which fill me with horror), but for now I just want to try to describe my experience. It'll be practice for when I decide to consult a professional.

I want to say "I can't think anymore," but I can. I'm thinking right now. And it's tempting to say that I can't focus, but I focus on tasks many times a day (for instance, composing this post). My focus doesn't last as long as it used to, but I bet that's true of almost everyone who spends much time on the shiny, shiny internet.

My sense of something being not quite business-as-usual in my brain, however, is persistent. It's harder for me to think things through than it used to be, to focus long enough to solve a problem, and to juggle multiple pieces of data at the same time. All of these mental feats are requirements of my job, so I'm constantly confronting the lack.

A lot of it is probably an effect of age. Things just don't matter as much when reproduction is off the table. When those juicy hormones of youth go, they take giving-a-damn with them and leave a peaceful insouciance behind. At least, that's been my experience.

But maybe the mental tools I sense becoming dull should never have been my primary tools anyway. Maybe I've stopped honing them because they're unnatural to me and I'm tired of spending my life energy that way. Maybe I'm just bored.

And even if I'm neurologically broken, or breaking, maybe there's another way of being in the world besides the sharp, incisive way so glorified by school and the economy and bosses and stuff.

I don't know yet.

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Your last post was all about finding the right search term to yield helpful results. "Brain fog" might be a good place to start here if you haven't already stumbled across that phrase.

Wow! I googled that and am fascinated! Thank you. This guy has some really interesting things to say about metal toxicity and other environmental causes.

Much to consider there. I would never have thought to google the term "brain fog," but it really fits. Thank you so much!

I discovered the term while researching neurological autoimmune diseases, but it looks like there's a really wide range of things it can be a symptom of. I'm surprised to see that it could be a nutrition or environmental thing!

I'm never surprised to see that a condition could have nutritional or environmental causes.

Further research is leading me towards hormonal causes. I've even made an appointment with a physician. I'm kind of excited now!

This is so familiar a subject to me I could have written this post. I did have an MRI, which showed nothing wrong. If you can avoid having one, I would. It was not a pleasant experience. Not horror, but not pleasant, and very expensive even with insurance.

I can at least share my experience and maybe bits of that will help? I am an accountant/financial analyst. When I started school for these things a dozen years or so ago they came very naturally with no effort. Now I have difficulty setting up simple journal entries. It's like that part of my brain went on strike and has never come back, and at this point I don't think it will. At work I cope by doing things very consistently and leaving myself little notes everywhere. If there is a chance I'll look at something more than a week away, I leave myself instructions on where that data came from, because I won't remember. This has been very helpful.

I am also realizing that I am really not cut out for this type of work. I started a photography business and LOVE it. I started selling candles. These seem to activate the parts of my brain that want to be active, and I don't need to do math or juggle data, and I am happy with these things. For me, I think I was trying too hard to do something that is not what I'm meant to do.

Hi Raindancer. This is so insightful! Thank you for taking the time to write it. I've been doing a lot of work and thinking about that great question of "who I really am," and realizing that whatever I am now, it's not what I was when I started doing the kind of work I do. Somehow, in various promotions and transfers and difficult choices, I've wound up doing work for which I'm barely suited, but which (up to now) I've been able to fake convincingly.

The image of part of the brain going on strike is very apt. I, too, cope (to the extent to which I cope at all) by being consistent and using lots of aids to memory and organization. There's nothing wrong with any of that, but the amount of energy I have to spend on it is draining me. And of course, the stress of that exacerbates whatever might actually be going on neurologically.

Thank you again for your insights. This has really helped me order my thoughts.

I hope that you are tired of your job or tired of this kind of thinking....if that's what's wrong, is it feasible to leave the job you have for something else you'd feel better doing? I know the job market sucks.

There is a possibility there's something physiologically wrong. I hope that there isn't! Are you forgetting things you used to remember easily? Do you feel disoriented sometimes? I just read Still Alice, by Lisa Genova, which is about Alzheimer's, so this is on my mind.

Hi Karen! Thanks for your kind words. Alzheimer's is a bit of a worry because family members on both sides have been diagnosed with it.

But I'm not going to head down that road till I've addressed a spectrum of less dire causes. Hormonal decline does seem to have this effect, as does stress.

So I'm going to see a naturopath about some bioidentical hormones, and I'm already planning my retirement (the biggest, shiniest thing in my bag of tricks, but not deployable for a couple of years).

And in the meantime, I'm finding it so helpful just to hear the wisdom and kindness of my friends online! Thanks again.

Hon, I've followed your journal for several years and I think you are the cat's pj's. I would feel terrible if I alarmed you unnecessarily, but if I were you I'd check out the Alzheimer's possibility as soon as you can. If you are tested and find out you don't have it, it would be a huge relief. If you find out you do, you can plan for the future.

Alzheimer's is in my thoughts because I read Still Alice and also went to see Lisa Genova give a talk this last Thursday on what it's like to have Alzheimer's. She just happened to be coming to my town a week after I finished the book, which is pretty amazing. The book describes the experience from the point of view of a Harvard prof who gets Az. at age 50.

I love you much, and am very much hoping that hormone replacement therapy will be all you need. However, the book Still Alice makes a strong point that early diagnosis of AZ is really important in dealing w the disease.

I'm happy to report that there's already progress! I started a bio-identical phyto-progesterone treatment late yesterday and the difference today is marked.

I had a look at the ten warning signs of Alzheimers (none seem particularly applicable), and at the current treatments (none treat the cause), and am pretty comfortable leaving that option off the table for now. That said, I'll ask the doctor I'm going to next week to weigh in on the subject.

I believe this is a known symptom of menopause, and I think it's supposed to get better after menopause ends. (It's one of the symptoms I fear most.) I don't know where you are on that spectrum, though.

Yup, menopause is the likeliest culprit. I've had very few problems with menopause otherwise, and it has been in all other respects an easy transition into a significantly better life.

My older friends tell me that sharpness of mind returns with hormone treatments, and that they would pretty much sacrifice anything to insure that they always have their cream, patch, or subcutaneous pod. I've never been motivated till now to see it out, but I've got an appointment next week to find out more.

I find myself lately having a very difficult time expressing myself. I stutter and trip over words, I lose words and in general feel odd, and out of place. I'd assumed it was part of aging, this restless, unsettled, grabbing for bits of information feeling that's taken over everything! In RL, I'm a lot quieter than I've ever been before because of this.

What you're describing is very much what I've been experiencing. I just had a long talk about my strange symptoms with a friend who's 65, and for the first time in five years of her yammering on about bio-identical hormone replacement, I was in motivated not only to listen, but to take action. She swears that her BHR cream has returned her to early 40s mentally, and that on the one occasion when she let her prescription lapse for a couple of weeks, she had the horrible "Flowers for Algernon" experience of sinking back into the fog.

(Let me tell you, that last bit was the clincher for me.)

While we were talking, I found a natural health clinic in my area advertising a full range of health services including bio-identicals. I booked an appointment online, bit the financial bullet, and am going next Tuesday.

I shall report.

I know the feeling. I'm in my 40s and I've had trouble remembering things much more than usual. Which is to say that I was always rather forgetful but the forgetfulness became much more apparent to me. I blame it on perimenopause, and started taking Gingko Biloba. It made quite the difference! I feel just normally forgetful now, lol.

Perhaps you are bored with your work. Perhaps this is your spirit's way of nudging you on to your next challenge.

Ginkgo! Yes! I took it for a while and it was very helpful. Frankly, that failure of random-access memory that seemed so devastating when it first started happening (when I was in my 40s) came to be normal and I'd learned to work around it. But I remember Velcro-brain, and I miss it. I will get some more ginkgo right away. Thank you for the reminder.

I am, indeed, bored with my work and I do need to move on. Happily, retirement is an option, and this latest situation has removed any doubts I have about doing it sooner rather than later. The spiritual side of this whole business is important to me, and I want to keep it in my sights. I appreciate your mentioning it.

you can 'outgrow' jobs. Especially ones that you have done for a long time. You also come to the realization that there are more interesting things that you want to do with your life, the older you get and a certain impatience with the mundane sets in.

A certain impatience for the mundane indeed!

Whatever else may be going on physiologically, it doesn't alter the fact that my job and I have nothing more to offer each other. My difficulties in doing the work have made me feel that I still needed to grow into the job, obscuring the fact that I've already outgrown it.

I do think retirement is my next thing.

This is very interesting. I've experienced a similar ... I don't know that I'd call it inability to focus, so much as an unwillingness. I can focus fine on writing, for example, but not on the paid work. I think. too, that when you attain a certain level of competence, you don't get the same kick from challenge and success that you do when you're less skilled. That in turn switches off the perky fear and joy hormones, so your ability to assess your performance becomes less sharp as well.

Of course, it's sensible to get checked out if you're worried, but I suspect it's all entirely normal and just your priorities shifting. I suspect the prospect of retirement on your near horizon is making work seem less and less important!

You and

executrix have expressed similarly calm and rational perspectives emphasizing that notion of unwillingness versus inability. It's true that I don't feel the terrible frustration of wanting-to and failing; rather, it's a sense of slight guilt for not-giving-a-damn--or not enough of a damn to try any harder.

Being that laziness is my besetting sin and the thing I've felt most guilty about all my working life, it's not surprising that a little urgency should arise when laziness seems to be increasing. But only a little.

"Perky hormones" is a great term. I applied some last night and I'm already feeling amazingly improved! Not 100% sure of the cause-and-effect, but I'm feeling pretty sanguine.

And you know what? Now I don't give a damn, but I feel really sharp! It's awesome.

I hope you do explore this further and find an answer. I'm concerned, because you mentioned your difficulty with reading a year or so back.

Thank you so much for your kind thoughts. The difficulty in reading has been a focus-and-attention issue, which I've been attributing to adult onset-ADD probably caused by, you know, the internet in general. It will be very interesting to see whether a course of bio-identical hormones improves that condition too. I would love to get back to focused reading (and knitting).

I've seen menopause described as "when you forget how to speak English" and I do notice I'm having more of what I call "spatula errors"--i.e., "Please hand me the, uh, you know, the thing to poke pancakes with".

However, I think in addition to whatever hormonal events are occurring, you're in the position of a high school senior looking out the window on a nice day in June. It kind of doesn't matter *what* the AP Chem teacher is saying at that point.

Hee! Your analogy is perfect, and has been making me smile all day. The prospect of retirement really has made me into that high school senior (except now I'll just be a senior in general), and I love the implication of "graduating" to a new level of life.

I'm starting bio-identical hormones (because I am not above self-medicating) and the difference already, from the application of a little over-the-counter phyto-progesterone-with-adrenal-support-herbs cream, is nothing short of amazing, and certainly enough to make me excited about going to see a real physician about a real prescription.

Hurrah! I love it when a plan comes together!

Maybe it's a function of your interest in moving away from your current good, but not terribly creative or fulfilling, job. Allied to the attention deficit caused by trying to do many things at once. I mean, I know you have to juggle many things at once at work, but IIRC, when you were talking about reading a while back, I got the impression that even in your leisure time, you have many windows open, both literally and metaphorically. :) I don't know, but I hope you figure it out soon. And if anyone I know is capable of tracking down a solution to any given problem, it's you. :)

Thank you for the vote of confidence.

I launched a new little household project over the weekend, and it dawned on me when I was well into it that my ability to focus on it (including measurements, calculations and three-dimensional visualization) had already vastly improved after a day or so of dosing with an over-the-counter progesterone cream. The difference was, and continues to be, really marked.

Biochemistry is everything--I'm a great believer in it--but I also believe that the interplay between thoughts, actions, and shifting neurotransmitters and hormones is very complex. Which is to say that my having a lot of window open is probably on both the cause side and the effect side of the problem.

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