Monday, July 17, 2006

Moron being a “loser”

Just a silly play on words…sorry. In giving this new problem of losing things some thought, I might have come up with a reason why it happens (some, but maybe not all of the time.) Pre-ECT, I might be on my way to put something in its place and realize that there was something else I needed to do. For example, I might have a piece of paper regarding the sale of the house that needed to go in the “Home Sale” file and, on the way to the file, realized that I needed to turn a sprinkler in the backyard off. Before ECT, I would have made a mental note to turn that sprinkler off after I filed the paper, or I might have put the paper on the table, turned the sprinkler off, and then picked the paper up and filed it. Now, however, I think I am more inclined to do the sprinkler thing as I think of it, instead of after filing the paper, because I’m afraid that by the time I get to the file cabinet I will forget what it was I was going to do next (i.e. turn the sprinkler off.) My short term memory still leaves much to be desired. Now, I lay the paper down on the table, turn the sprinkler off, but FORGET to pick the paper back up and file it. It then gets swept into the “great-unknown place” where things not put in their rightful places go, and it never makes it to the “Home Sale” file. I sacrifice organization, unknowingly, to cover the deficit I suffer in short-term memory. Just a theory.

The rest of that theory is that, where before ECT I could put something in a place and then remember where I put it, now I put the thing somewhere and then just can’t remember where I put it. Also, before ECT, my personality and mental approach to things led me to put things in certain places which made sense, allowing me to later remember those places and find those items. My post-ECT personality and mental approach to things differs. This difference results in me putting things in places which make sense at the time, but which may not align very well with the places I look for those things later. Hmmm. Interesting stuff.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

What you have written is a classic account of ECT memory and cognitive deficits, most likely caused by brain damage.

You can go back as far as 1944 and find former ECT patients describing exactly what you did, in exactly the same words.

Or you could go to 1961, or 1994.

So much for so called "new and improved" ECT.

It is positively eerie.

10:11 AM  
Blogger DeMental said...

I don't have time to re-locate my specific sources at present, but there are mentions "in the literature" of severe depression causing memory deficit. It could have been there before ECT. I wouldn't have known. I was so caught up in my current misery and managing day-to-day just to keep living I wouldn't have had occasion to notice memory loss from medium to long term periods.

And the "new and improved" has merit. The memory problems may be the same (and better documented), but the treatment certainly isn't physically agonizing due to use of a paralytic and anesthesia. Looking at 1941 or 1966, the treatment was done wide awake for maximum enjoyment (a la "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.")

6:53 PM  
Blogger Tomas said...

You know Mike, there are more by many magnitudes mentions in the literature of memory deficits caused by electroshock. You and me are by no stretch of imagination alone in that respect.

12:13 PM  

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