Forgot how to dog

This is how I've felt the past couple of days.  Nothing seems quite right and I feel like I'm just not in the right place or in the right moment or something else entirely.  The caption for this image was "Forgot how to dog."  I think, maybe, I have forgot how to Shanda.  I'm having memory issues again and just feel heavy and floaty and overwhelmed but uninspired.  It's as though I cannot remember how to be me.  Sure, I can be any one of the fake mes.  Grab a mask and slap it on and showtime.  But the real me, she's hiding or gone or just forgotten. 

Indescribable

I cannot explain what is going on in my head right now.  The words won't come to me.  Descriptions are not possible.  I just know that it isn't good.

The difficult thing is that it also isn't bad.  I'm not suicidal.  I'm not hibernating in my bed, avoiding the world and all responsibilities.  I'm not any more bitchy or temperamental than what has become typical of me.  I'm still functioning...for the most part.

But there is this dark cloud over me.  It's like I'm swimming through sludge at something less than a snail's pace.  My thoughts are muddled and mixed up and they make no sense to me most of the time.  When they do, in that brief, flickering moment, I snag an ounce of clarity before it drifts away.  I have virtually no attention span rendering focusing on any given task for more than a few moments impossible.  It's taken me nearly an hour just to write this post.  I keep getting distracted and drawing a blank and falling into some random thought process that doesn't seem to even involve actual thoughts. 

I'm going to call my doctor today. I'm going to ask to drop the Wellbutrin just to see how that goes. And then? I don't know. The next steps rely on what the doctor has to say.

Until then, I'm just going to do my best to keep it together.  I really do feel like one move, one thought, one moment could shatter me into a million pieces.  I don't want that to happen.  It simply can't happen because I don't know if I will be able to pick up the pieces, much less put them back together to resemble something even remotely like me. 

War in my mind

I know I've written about my fear of getting Alzheimer's and why my increased forgetfulness only boosts that fear into an almost terror.  Combine that with the also increased episodes of blanking when having conversations and we're just a tiny hop from full terror. 

To me, it seems that I used to have an incredible memory.  True, I could remember certain events a certain way while someone else recalled the incident in a completely different manner, but I did remember things.  My long-term memory is good to excellent.  My short-term memory is okay to good.  But my, I'm going to call it "immediate-term" memory, usually fails me. 

Immediate-term memory is when you have a thought pop into your head during a conversation and politely wait for the next pause to jump in and share it.  It can be 2 seconds or 2 minutes before that pause, and you start to speak and... nothing.  Your mind hits the delete key and you have no idea what you wanted to say. 

Another immediate-term memory issue is going to look something up online only to open your browser and go completely blank.  You sit there, hands on the keyboard, and stare at the screen.  Your mind races as it scrambles to remember.  Perhaps you start to mentally retrace the last several moments, hoping that something will trigger your memory and enable you to do what you had planned.

Or you walk into a room with the intention of getting something - a book - or doing something - feeding your dogs - and you stop, dead in your tracks and have a brief moment of panic as you ponder why you came into this room.  More than likely, you look around and hope that something pops out and you have that aha moment of remembering.  You might return to the place from where you have just come, willing that to jump-start your brain. 

This has been happening to me more and more lately. 

Sometimes I remember in a few moments, sometimes I'm about to fall asleep and recall what I'd wanted to say.  There are also times that it seems as though the thought/the act/the plan has completely vanished from my radar.  I still know that I'd had an intention but drive myself a bit crazy as I still cannot remember what it was. 

It is frustrating.

And scary.

Mind problems

I've been reporting that I've been feeling much better and that I'm not experiencing as many of the depression issues that plague me.  And I am.  I'm very hopeful that I will continue to improve.

There is, however, one problem that has not improved.  My brain is still a very muddled place to live.  My thoughts are quickly dissipating and I keep finding myself either rambling and providing too much information or not being able to compose a single thought or at least one that makes sense.  Quite often I go to speak and when I open my mouth to do so, I go blank and spend time trying to recall what it was that I'd wanted to say, usually without success.

I know that this can be something that is totally unrelated to my struggles with depression but I also know that it can have something to do with my depression or other mental disorders.   It is something that I will bring up to Dr. S when I see him in a few weeks on October 16.

This issue is both aggravating and unnerving to me.  It's aggravating because I hate not being able to rely on my brain to help me communicate.  It doesn't happen all the time but it happens enough that I'm noticing it as a problem.  Words are also my thing and not being able to string them together to form thoughts and express myself is almost as bad as taking away the air that I breathe.

It is unnerving because of my family history involving dementia and Alzheimer's disease.  My paternal grandmother had dementia and was showing the early signs of Alzheimer's when she passed away.  Her passing may have, in part, been caused by the dementia and/or Alzheimer's.  Her children - my father and my aunt - are both in their early- to mid-sixties and are experiencing issues with memory loss.  My father has always been bad with names and forgetful but it is gotten worse over the years.  Sometimes he forgets that he has told me something and repeats it a few times.  This isn't usually in the same conversation but two separate conversations roughly a week apart.  He also tends to think he's told me something or that I've told him something that hasn't been said.

At one time I read that people with mental disorders are more likely to get dementia and/or Alzheimer's disease and also that both can run in families.  All of the blood-related women on my father's side of the family (sister, grandmother, aunt, cousin and her daughter), including my father, have all had issues with depression that have required medication at one point in time or another.   I've also heard that depression and other mental disorders can also run in families.  Makes me a bit worried about my current problems.

In the last two years, instances of my forgetfulness have been increasing.  One day I went to cut up a tomato for a salad and stood there with the knife in one hand and the tomato in the other for several moments before remembering how to cut it.  There are other times that I will place items I need to take with me upon leaving only to forget to take them.  The forgetfulness does not occur as much as the moments when I just lose my thoughts.