A summer cold, just great.

Well I am suffering with a cold this week. Something that would have been a minor annoyance in the past and now days can be quite a bit to handle. The doctors tell me this is common with any dementia because people like me have much less reserve in the brain so when you have a virus or infection it really knocks you down in functioning.

I just read an article that is extremely interesting and proves what I had come to think about the brain. And that is they don't truly understand how the brain can compensate for injuries and diseases of the brain. This new study shows that self awareness is controlled by many areas of the brain, not just a couple. I highly recommend reading it. Link to article. I encounter what they talk about in the article often in that people will think I am perfectly normal when in fact I have serious difficulties with some things and am not even close to the person I was as far as abilities 10 years ago. I am slowly being more and more challenged with spelling which was always instinctual with me and I could spell almost any word from memory. I now will blank on the word I really want to use and my brain will come up with an alternate word that I perhaps haven't used hardly at all in my entire life even though I was well aware of the meaning. I forget names of people and places that I know extremely well recently which I find quite disturbing since most of the damage up until now that was noticeable seemed to be to things like executive function. It is certainly a journey of which you have no idea what to expect from one day to another. One day at a time is what I keep telling myself. Anything more is too overwhelming.

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