4 ms·

Similar anecdata: Mid-40s here. Following a colonoscopy in my 30s, I have incredible trouble with dates and orders of things, finding words for things, and I lo

Similar anecdata: Mid-40s here. Following a colonoscopy in my 30s, I have incredible trouble with dates and orders of things, finding words for things, and I lose my place when I'm speaking. Mid-sentence, just draw a blank. I end up yielding the floor so someone else can speak, I might pipe up later if my thought comes back to me. Also, this happens constantly and it's maddening, I'll be a few thoughts deep and can't backtrack to how I got here; I used to be able to unwind my whole train of thought. I make a lot more typos and I also miss seeing a lot of them to correct them so they slip out in my writing, which used to be impeccable. There are even unique types of typos that I've started making -- if a word has repeated letters, I'll jump the letters between, so for instance "cognition" becomes "cognion". I never made this sort of typo before the procedure. It's all gotten even worse since the pandemic which I've been told is stress-related, and absolutely nobody will take me seriously as a result. What's worse, is the standard of diagnosability doesn't take into account how you used to be. So if you started off smart and now you're just sorta average, no problem here, why are you wasting our time? It's like if your Bugatti now accelerates like a Yugo, sorry, that's technically street-legal so according to this book there's nothing wrong with it. It has to perform worse than a Yugo before we can take a look. What a shitty mechanic, you know? But that's where medicine seems to be.

jawilson2 5y ago
I'm 41, and you are describing me to a tee. I had surgery about 4 years ago, and was under for less than an hour. The language issues, writing and spelling, etc. Most importantly for me is that writing software has gotten a lot more difficult. I attributed it to aging, but after reading some of this research, I'm questioning that. It feels like the issues have popped up in the last several years. However... I feel like this is how we got into the false causal relationship between autism and vaccines. Kids get a lot of vaccines in the first 4 years of life, and are diagnosed with autism then as well. So, you work backwards from a diagnosis and say, "oh the problems started a few weeks after the 3 year check-up, and they got shots, so the shots caused it!!" I would be worried we are doing the same here. There is likely cognitive decline in men in their late 30s due to stress from work and kids, lack of sleep, reduced activity + weight gain, etc. We also get colonoscopies (or other procedures) around then as well. So, it is easy to say, "well I started having memory problems a few years ago, right around the time I had a hernia repair under general anesthesia, so they MUST be related."

jawilson2 5y ago

I'm 41, and you are describing me to a tee. I had surgery about 4 years ago, and was under for less than an hour. The language issues, writing and spelling, etc. Most importantly for me is that writing software has gotten a lot more difficult. I attributed it to aging, but after reading some of this research, I'm questioning that. It feels like the issues have popped up in the last several years. However... I feel like this is how we got into the false causal relationship between autism and vaccines. Kids get a lot of vaccines in the first 4 years of life, and are diagnosed with autism then as well. So, you work backwards from a diagnosis and say, "oh the problems started a few weeks after the 3 year check-up, and they got shots, so the shots caused it!!" I would be worried we are doing the same here. There is likely cognitive decline in men in their late 30s due to stress from work and kids, lack of sleep, reduced activity + weight gain, etc. We also get colonoscopies (or other procedures) around then as well. So, it is easy to say, "well I started having memory problems a few years ago, right around the time I had a hernia repair under general anesthesia, so they MUST be related."