welcome to the organic green doctor blog

i am a family physician who was diagnosed with
early mild cognitive impairment(mci) amnestic type on december 21, 2010
this is a precursor to alzheimers disease
because of this diagnosis i have opted to stop practicing medicine
this blog will be about my journey with this disease
please feel free to follow me along this path
i will continue blogging on organic gardening, green living,
solar power, rainwater collection, and healthy living
i will blog on these plus other things noted to be interesting

Thursday, April 4, 2013

how do i get tested

HOW DO I GET TESTED

i frequently am asked this question by people when they
talk to me or via texts or on emails or on facebook or via comments
to this blog

sometimes its easy to do a self administered test or one
administered by a love one and then take it to your doctor
for them to look at

this weekend i got an email from a blog i follow that has
5 of the most common self tests that are recommended
the best of them is the sage test that ive written about
before

you can go to this link to see those 5 tests then click on
the ones that you are interested in
remember the sage test is the best one

there also is the ad8 test from washington university
that can be seen at this link and taken

then there is the 21 question test that ive also written about
before that can be viewed at this link

take one of these tests if you think you or someone else
has a problem

if the results show that there may be a problem
then i suggest you

make an appointment with your doctor

take a copy of the test you took with the results

if you have noticed problems or someone else has
write these down and show them to the doctor

in tomorrows blog i will include a slide from my presentation
i will  be doing in a month at an alzheimers symposium
that tells you exactly what tests you should have done
if there appears to be a memory problem

hopefully this will be helpful

remember my problem with short term memory was
identified only because i had a normal mental status evaluation
5 years ago when i applied for long term care insurance
then 3 years later when i tried to enter the alzheimers disease
neuroimaging initiative study in the normal control group
i had developed short term memory problems identified
on the studys neuropsychologial tests

my short term memory loss is very early but further evaluation
probably has identified the cause as possible alzheimers diesease

remember if you or some one else has noticed a problem with
your memory that is not due to the age related memory issues that
we all get then you do have a problem and should seek an
evaluation by your doctor

tomorrow i will do the first of 4 blogs on my presentation that i
will be doing in 1 month
if you are interested in alzheimers disease you might want to
read those blogs on the next 4 fridays



also i will be entering my 2 year followup of the study that
im in and will be blogging about the testing as it happens this
month
neuropsychological test
neurology examination
lots of blood work including blood biomarkers for alzheimers
spinal tap for beta amyloid and tau
mri scan of the brain
glucose metabolism pet scan of the brain
beta amyloid pet scan of the brain

ill discuss each and what they mean as im having it done

the organicgreen doctor

1 comment:

  1. Here is another test that can be self-administered on the computer: http://foodforthebrain.org/research/alzheimers-prevention-project/cognitive-function-test.aspx

    You can retake it once a year and compare over time.

    ReplyDelete