MS and cognitive issues

My most hated symptom BY FAR is cognitive issues. My short term memory is pathetic. It is very hard to make decisions and process information. It's like my brain is in slow motion. Problem solving is a real trial. Being in a crowd with lots of things going on around me is chaos to the extreme. Concentration is poor. The list goes on and on.

I used to be a fast typist. Really fast. Now I am so slow it's frustrating. It's like going from super high speed internet to dial up ... or worse. I can use that same analogy for my slow-motion brain too. Dial up speed.

I also have issues with spelling. I used to be an "A Student" when it came to spelling. Now I mess up the simplest of words. I usually, eventually, catch the mistakes but it takes a while sometimes of staring at the word and thinking "now that's just not right" ... and sometimes it's so obviously wrong that I just have to laugh at myself.

Example: I just spelled "speed" "sepped". At least it has the same letters. Often times half or all of the letters are not even supposed to be in the word I am trying to spell.

If anyone reads this and has suggestions on how I can help my cognitive issues, please share. I have been making schedules to help keep me on track, but the problem is I often do not feel good enough to follow the schedule so it's all in vain anyway. I take lots of notes but forget where I put them. I rely on my cell phone calendar a lot. This is the only consistent thing that seems to help.

MS and driving

The other day I was driving and realized my mind was not working right. I was thankful to be in our small town and almost home but it was scary nonetheless. I should not have been driving! Things that used to be 'no brainers' were now suddenly taking a lot of thought and were confusing to me. As far as I can remember, the other day was the first time my brain confusion impaired my ability to drive. Is this a sign of things to come or was it an isolated incident? Time will tell.

Usually if I cannot drive it's because I am too weak to continuously push the gas pedal. Cruise control is a blessing on road trips but city driving is physically exhausting for me and often times physically impossible. And then of course in this current "pseudo exacerbation" it was hard to drive at first because my right side was not working properly. It has since let up a little and driving is easier ... unless my brain is mixed up of course!

I probably have many years of driving ahead of me, but maybe I do not? Oh well, thankfully I have support and do not really like to drive anyway. You know, now that I think of it, the last few years have been hard on me. I thought I was getting confused in bigger cities because I moved to a small town. But now that I think about it, it's probably MS. I've lived in big cities my whole life and never had a problem navigating even the worst of situations. Now I probably make big city people mad because I drive slower because I have to think more.

Be merciful to the slow driver in front of you. You never know but maybe they are just doing the best they can?

Speech and MS

MS has many faces. Some are ugly. Some are sad. Some are just plain funny. Today I will share a funny side.

No, we are not stupid. Sometimes we just have troubles talking. I used to be a very good speaker. Always aced the college speeches, was great at customer service on the phone, and so on. Now however I assume some people just think I'm stupid. Oh well. At least I can laugh.

Here is an example.

I was out shopping with someone and we needed something measured. Imagine me talking really slow and deliberately as I said: "We can take it to the fabric depart [pause for thinking...] depart [thinking...] depart [still thinking...] departner [no wait, that's not right. What should it be?] I mean, department, and have it weighed [ugh, more thinking] I mean measured."