Adaptation

The most common, well-meaning, question I get regarding my short-term memory loss is, "Will it get better? Will you get your memory back?" I just kind of want to be like, "I was electrocuted seven times. I feel like you are asking a lot of my brain to recover memories and keep new ones stored in there," but I usually just say, "I don't know". The actual truth is that the doctor's don't know what my brain will remember and what has been permanently erased. To be honest, if everything in life is on a bell curve, my memory loss seems to be two standard deviations away from the mean on the right hand side. Meaning folks in the know seem to be a little surprised that it's so severe and continues to be a problem. Either that or it's only old people who usually comment on ECT and they don't notice a difference in the quality of their memories so they can't report either way on what effect ECT had.

I am two weeks out of treatment and I keep getting told by mental health professionals that I need to be patient. Six weeks out seems to be a more magic time when my "neurons start forming new mental pathways in the brain and the chemical reactions start normalizing". I put that in quotes because I don't really believe that science has advanced far enough to fully understand the human brain. If it did, we would have cured epilepsy, autism, and depression by now. I feel like doctors, with their medicines and their talk therapy, are still essentially stumbling around in the dark trying their best through trial and error to see if some combination of something will actually work. At least that's been my experience and I have 10 years of treatment under my belt so I feel I've earned the right to talk with authority.

Life has required some adapting. Let's start with the positive. Here are things that I remember, every time, no matter how obscure: 1) passwords, which in a computer generation where I do most of my bill pay online is somewhat amazing and definitely appreciated. 2) My kids' birthdays. I'm pretty sure this was in my long-term memory so probably doesn't count. 3) How much sleep I got the night before. Yeah, I'm looking at you Ben. Was it really necessary to be up from 3:30am - 5:30am? 4) What I wore the day before, so at least I don't have to color-code my hangars or anything or go to a standby "this is what I wear on Thursdays" system. 5) Most things regarding Zac, including what he said, how he acted, and how is day was in school yesterday.

Without fail, here is what I forget, on a day-to-day basis: 1) television series plots. Usually this occurs when I can't remember what happened at the end of last season and I'm trying to piece together what is going on this season. On really bad days, I can't remember what happened the week before. On the plus side (see all this positivity I'm putting out? It's like I'm vomiting rainbows), there are no reruns for me! Everything is a new episode. 2) Plots in the book I'm trying to read. If there are too many characters and too many locations that the plot is set in, every night it's like picking up a new novel and trying to figure out from context what the hell is going on. That's been probably the hardest to deal with in my personal life because I get so much joy from books and I read every night. It's also affected Zac the most because I can't remember the plot to the "Wrinkle in Time" books that we are reading. Let me just say, in my defense, with a fully functional brain, I'm not sure that I would ever follow the plot to "Wind in Time" and pronouncing the word "farandolae" every other sentence is hard. Those books seem to be written directly to an 8 year-old psyche and feel like the literary equivalent to "The Neverending Story". Adults aren't meant to understand. On the downside, Zac told me he didn't want to read with me if I couldn't remember what happened in the book the night before and we had to work on his empathy button for a good twenty minutes. 3) Whether or not I spoke to someone outside my family the day before. 3A) If there is a record of me speaking to them, then I can't remember what I said or what they said back to me. This is the most challenging aspect of memory loss professionally. My job is to form relationships with new people, which involves remembering small details or even big details like, "Stop calling me you crazy psycho. I hope you crawl into a dark hole and die of a respiratory disease.". Do you know what happens when someone says this to you, you forget to write it down, and then you call them back the next day? Profanity. That's what happens. A shit storm is unleashed on you making you question the worth of your very existence.

Professionally is where I've had to adapt the most. I basically talk on the phone for a living. Sometimes I make trades on a computer, but I have to be on the phone to do it. The obvious answer to my problem would be to take detailed notes on every conversation so I can pick them up the next day. The only problem is sometimes I talk to 100 or more people a day. There are only so many notes I can write. I've developed sort of a system. It's like that scene in "Memento" (a movie that I now identify with in scary and slightly heart-warming ways) where he's looking at polaroids in the back of his trunk and he says, "You learn to trust your own handwriting (because he would write on the bottom of every picture he had some important detail). You trust your instincts". It's a little like that. Sure, sometimes I get in the car at the end of the day and I forget where Ben goes to daycare, but I just start driving by instinct and eventually something will feel right and I'll remember where I'm going. Same with going to the grocery store. Sure, a list would be helpful, but if I don't have one I just walk down the aisles until it occurs to me why I came into the store. Other adults do this one.

I think it's not actually me that's had to adapt the most, it's KGII and Zac. Being asked the same question three days in a row would get unbelievably annoying and would challenge anyone's patience. I recognize that. But I can't stop the behavior if not only I don't remember the answer to the question I've asked, but I don't even remember that I asked the question to begin with. There are a lot of sighs and, "I've told you this three times now..." around my house. Fortunately, KGII in particular, has been very kind and loving and will repeat himself. What he doesn't like is when he tells me about an event or a conversation that has happened in the past and I try to argue with him that it never happened. That's awesome. Here's a pro tip: if you are going to argue with someone with no memory, bring hard evidence to back up your claim. Once he can verifiably prove that it did in fact happen (pictures, text messages, or third party verification have all been used as evidence) I feel bad apologize. Living with me must be hard. Living with very little short-term memory is hard, but I'm adapting. It just takes time.