Talk about What I Should've Said… I stewed for ridiculous length of time, trying to think of a title for my groundhog's day post. I didn't come up with what I was after until this morning, a day late and a dollar short, as usual. I guess I could've gone back and changed it, but that seems like cheating, somehow.
I do that a lot. I don't mean cheating; I mean not being able to find a word when I want to use it. Long before I had any other symptoms that were clearly MS-related, I had trouble coming up with words. I'd mentally construct a sentence intending to use a particular word, but when I got there, the word was nowhere to be found. It was the weirdest thing.
When I mentioned it to various neurologists, they'd look at me like I'd grown two heads. I've since learned that it's a fairly common cognitive problem among people with MS. So it's not just me.
You'd think it would've really cramped my style as a writer, but fortunately technical documentation for network software uses a pretty limited vocabulary. For anything else, I could usually come up with the word I was after eventually. It just may not happen until the next day. You skip that bit and come back to it later. It could be a bit awkward in conversation, but manageable otherwise. Not a huge problem, as problems go.
But it still pisses me off.
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Hello world!
10 months ago
Marmot Moment is the perfect title for yesterday's blog post. Coming up with wrong words was my first symptom as well. Long before the physical stuff. Funny, no?
ReplyDeleteIt pisses me off too... I think it's one of the worst symptoms. And maybe it's only the worst because it's a reminder that our mind is being impacted.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I've grown sort of attached to the junk... in fact, I think it's made my writing better and my conversations more interesting. Replacement words have spiced up my communications a bit LOL The "second choice" words are usually much more colorful and descriptive
Moment of madness, madness of the moment, do not know where I was headed with this. Not accessing the correct words oh yeah it happens a lot to me.
ReplyDeleteDoctor appointments are the worst when I can not find the language to explain or when I attempt to I get the strange looks from the doc. You would think that if they deal with MS patients they would expect communication problems.
I wrote out a huge essay response but Blogspot didn't like my Wordpress account T^T
ReplyDeleteANYWAY, I said something like if this is a symptom for MS, I am doomed! XD I know EXACTLY what you are talking about. Also, sometimes I think I know what word I want to use, but by the time I've finished the rest of the sentence I realize I can't figure it out. Sometimes, if I am lucky enough to think of the word beforehand, I will write the word down before writing the rest of the sentence.