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HT cognitive issues... hoo boy....

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Posted 3/1/2015 6:16 PM (GMT 0)
Redwing, I hope you managed to avoid the Bandersnatch.

And then, of course, we all await the frabjous day when we join the "0" club, calloo callay!
Posted 3/1/2015 6:32 PM (GMT 0)
We all have anecdotes about times when our brain misfires and we get confused. They get more frequent with age -- although teenagers seem unusually subject to them as well -- but everybody has them from time to time and it is hard to draw any real conclusions about them, especially since they tend to occur when our brains aren't working that well.

What seems more significant to me is the difficulty I have had with certain cognitive tasks at work. Designing and debugging computer software requires the ability to model systems in ones mind and draw inferences about how the parts interact. It's a bit like those spacial reasoning problems one sees on intelligence tests -- the ones with the pictures of gears, belts and pulleys -- where the way to answer the question is to look at the gears, understand the linkages, and set the parts of the machine spinning in your mind's eye. Since I have started on HT I find this sort of reasoning vastly more difficult. Not just occasionally during spate of brain-flatus, but every time I sit down to look at a problem.

I suppose it could be my age. Perhaps problems that are easy for a 59 year old are vastly more difficult at 62. But the onset of the problem a few months after I started the ADT seems quite the coincidence.
Posted 3/1/2015 7:24 PM (GMT 0)
Faustmann said above:

"I am going to ask my coworkers and family to be honest and tell me if they have noticed any memory problems..."

Well, that's precisely what a person suspicious of his own possibly failing memory has to do. That is, if your memory is failing, how can you possibly know that your memory is failing, since your memory is failing?

But it can also be argued, on a more positive note, that if you have enough of your wits about you to wonder if there really is a problem or not, then there's a good chance there really isn't a problem. (Similar to what the psychiatrists say: if you think you're crazy, you're probably really not).

You're not at all like the person who steadfastly denies he has a problem, when the evidence is virtually piling up that he does.
Posted 3/1/2015 9:28 PM (GMT 0)
No offense 81 gy intended, but if what you say were true, this thread and the replies would vanish! If you forget where your keys are, you would know that you forgot, not withstanding that you know not where. Live and Prosper!
Posted 3/1/2015 9:38 PM (GMT 0)
My husband started hormones on Wednesday. He went for the Sunday paper on Saturday morning.
Posted 3/1/2015 9:47 PM (GMT 0)
When my FIL retired, he said all the days just kind of merge. Taking that, perhaps it's just due to the fact work isn't there to keep tabs on which day it is.

Post Edited (Squirm) : 3/1/2015 4:07:39 PM (GMT-7)

Posted 3/1/2015 9:55 PM (GMT 0)

Redwing57 said...

So cognitive issues with HT? Maybe....

Jerry

The long and the short version. ... YES!

Didn't mean to yell out the answer but someone I know had a fairly rapid onset of serious cognitive impairment after hormone therapy, chemotherapy, and radiation.
We just couldn't figure out if one was to blame or the combination of all.

Seven months out from his last 3 month shot, an ever so slight improvement... However, his T level was still at 3 last month. Perhaps it is now at 10 and thus the slight improvement? :)
Posted 3/1/2015 11:06 PM (GMT 0)
Logoslidat -

Your point is well made, thank you. Perhaps I just forgot <grin> that memory is, as you are rightly suggesting, in reality a two-part process: first the act of forgetting itself, and then the fact that one can still remember (or realize) that the act of forgetting involving oneself has taken place. Again, good point.

The study of memory is such a fascinating thing! For instance, I remember reading once that the most vivid memories that we form in our lives are those of events that we experience in our late teens and early to mid twenties, for some reason. That seems to be very much the case with me, as I can remember events and experiences while I was in college (a time period included within that span mentioned above) with great clarity, as well as experiences in the military (also within that time period).

However, from about age 30 on, my memories seem to be a bit more muddled, and there are spans of time in my 30's, 40's and 50's that from a memory standpoint almost seem inaccessible, unless I really work at it.

Not sure if this works into the topic of memory failure per se, but it does seem to be an indication that the memory process is not at all static, and is subject to change, for better or worse, over time.
Posted 3/1/2015 11:54 PM (GMT 0)
This thread got me so interested in memory and its action that I did a little web surfing for the heck of it, and came up with a couple of facts about memory that I thought were so interesting that I thought they were worth sharing.

Perhaps I thought they were so interesting because they are, in fact, memory conditions that are exactly the opposite of each other.

Hyperthymesia. People with this condition have the extraordinary ability to remember every single detail of every day of their lives. If someone gives them a calendar date (month, day and year), even a date going back years or even decades, the person can immediately rattle off exactly what they did on that day, what the weather was like on that day, and virtually any other detail that happened on that day.

Anterograde amnesia. These people have essentially the opposite situation. Their memories were normal up to a certain date, then on that date they suffered an injury or illness that, in some unknown way, prevented their memories from ever processing new memories again. These people lead strange lives indeed since their memories stopped, living as if they have been trapped in a single moment of time. If one tries to engage them in a conversation, for example, they are constantly reaching out to shake the person's hand, thinking they are just meeting the person for the first time, although they have been talking to the person for several minutes.They can't remember what has happened even one minute into the past. They can get no work done because they constantly are starting the job over and over again, unable to remember that they began the job just a minute or so ago. But, again, their memories of their lives before the injury or illness took their memory storing function away, remain entirely available to them. It's as if their lives ended the day of their injury or illness.

Both of these conditions have been featured in segments on "60 Minutes." People with hyperthymesia have been presented recently. There was also an episode about British musician Clive Wearing, who suffers from the anterograde amnesia, a few years ago.

Searching the web for the terms and name above produces some very interesting reading indeed.

How fascinating is the human memory and how it works!
Posted 3/2/2015 12:20 AM (GMT 0)
81Gyguy, that is certainly interesting. It's also true that an emotional trauma can set up memory blockages that block everything around that time, in an effort to protect the person. This is the root of what we now call PTSD.

And, yes, drugs can have bizarre memory effects. The most effective anesthetics have memory effects at lower doses: sodium pentothal, famously, has the effect of being a truth serum...and in higher dosages is a highly effective anesthetic. Brain chemistry is hormone operated, and the idea that infusing a "male" brain with "female" hormones would certainly have an effect.
Posted 3/2/2015 7:15 AM (GMT 0)
My short term memory is now shocking, it is very frustrating to forget simple things like the milk when shopping. As someone already has stated the emotional side of ADT is very hard to take.
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