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

Wednesday, January 18, 2023

my story revisited #164-yes they are better

MY STORY REVISITED #164-YES THEY ARE BETTER

i still remember sitting there over 12 years ago staring at those pictures
they might as well been blank pieces of paper
i knew those pictures but i couldnt remember what they were
it made a me break out in a sweat
i had just a few minutes before not been able to remember those words they read to me
i got about half of the words right
2 years prior to this i remembered all the words read to me
3 years later when i saw those pictures on the neuropsych exam i knew them
but i couldnt recall them that day

those pictures were of a
sphinx
hammock
pelican
pretzel
and others i couldnt remember

when i repeated the neuropsych exam each year in the adni study i use to just chuckle and smile remembering how i couldnt remember them before as i now identified each one correctly

today 13 years later my memory tests my moca test and mmse test are all in the normal range
i usually dont miss any questions
you can miss 3 and still be normal on the moca

they had let me review my moca scores so i could see how i had dropped off initially then leveled back off to a low normal range

i score better now then when i wrote that blog
i notice the difference also

now i do have issues that is normal for my age
it use to bother me 
but 
now
i just let it pass knowing its normal to not remember something like a word

i attribute this to the aricept or donepezil and healthy living and maybe the aduhelm infusions

you should maximize your health also 
it may
prevent or slow down memory loss
prevent a heart attack or stroke
prevent cancer
make you feel better
control you diabetes
control your blood pressure
control your weight

its always interesting when i reread my old blogs
its like reading my diary sometimes
_________
10-24-2014

ARE THINGS BETTER

almost 4 years ago i took a neuropsychological examination
at the alzheimers center at ut southwestern in dallas

there was a portion of the test where i had to identify pictures
for some reason there were several pictures that i knew what
they were but i couldnt remember their names
sphinx hammock pretzel pelican eg
this is one of the items that gave me a low score on the initial
exam
now since ive taken this test 8 times in the last 4 years
i have learned the test
so that i get all those pictures correctly
in fact on the last test a few weeks ago i was 100% correct

was it because i learned the test or i am improving

my guess i learned the test i know thats the major part of the
reason
but i do think my memory is stable

there are lots of other parts of the test that you cant learn
as the answers are randomly changed each time
so
i still have short term memory problems but they dont seem
to have gotten worse

i was recently able to review my scores over the last few years
you can see the numbers improve from test to test then
they leveled off
still off slightly like a level where the bubble is
not quite in the lines

this week i got my official letter from the study
saying that my short term memory tests had improved
but i realize part of that was from learning the test
__________
so to answer the title of the blog
i would say
yes
i am better
why
i dont know for sure
but
ill take it

the organicgreen doctor

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