Choices, Choices

[lydy]

Which would you rather, to lose IQ points, or to be depressed?

Before it became an issue, I would have said depression, all the way. Lose IQ points? Utterly unacceptable.

The real world isn't as neat and orderly as thought experiments. Darn shame, really. I've been losing words. It feels like I've been losing them rather quickly. I also have a terrible time describing or explaining things. I find myself lost in a sea of pronouns, with space and movement confused concepts that I don't seem to be able to relate. Of course, I'm 43. It's a little early, maybe, to be experiencing aphasia, but it's certainly well within the normal range of human experience. It may be that I feel mine more keenly because I'm hyper-verbal. I never was able to give good directions. It feels worse, now, but that's self-reporting, which isn't very reliable in this area. When asked, friends usually shake their heads and say, I haven't noticed anything, or, Maybe a little, I'm not sure. I should probably just take their word for it. If these things are happening, they're probably being caused by my vast array of drugs.

Back to the question. I'm really not a scintillating conversationalist when depressed. In fact, I mostly don't socialize. I don't do projects. I don't even stare out the window at all the pretty birds. I may be smarter, but I do less with it. When I'm medicated, I go out with friends, I start and often finish projects, it's a lot better a ;life than being depressed.

Where's the line? Surely there has to be a line somewhere, but how would I know when I'd crossed it? Trying to do a cost/benefit analysis on your soul is a bitch.

Comments

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

One group I was in liked to play silly question and answer games. One night someone asked would we rather be geniuses or very very rich. All around the room people said, "smart of course" until they got to me. I said, "Being really smart has never made me happy, I'm willing to try rich now." They were all deeply shocked.

By my standards of that time I'm pretty rich now. And hey, a lot happier. That's just the drugs I hear you shout. Maybe, but being able to buy good doctors and good, and very expensive, drugs sure help out.

Cost/benefit analysis on your soul is a mug's game. I'm sorry you need to do it. I've been losing nouns for years now. I usually find them quite quickly -- the retrieval mechanism just jams I guess. My latest psych said it could very well be the medicine but there's no real way to tell. Probably upsets me less than it does you as I'm not so verbal -- touch dominant here. It's kind of funny really. I'll say stuff like, "Begins with h and is that pretty flower of many blooms. No, not hyacinth it's a different shaped word than that. Hydrangea! That's it!" Try describing the word you can't retrieve and maybe you'll be able to lay hands on it. Works for me anyhow.

MKK

[lydy.livejournal.com]

What you've got sounds like pretty typical nominal aphasia. I use that same retrieval system, and while it sometimes makes me feel stupid, it feels so good to have finally grabbed ahold of that word. It doesn't work for adjectives and verbs. I almost never lose a verb, but the adjectives have been going walkabout.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure depression has caused me to lose IQ points, or some semblance thereof. So in that sense it's an easy decision. Given a choice I'd get rid of the chronic pain over the depression, though.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The mother of someone close to me refuses to acknowledge that there are any tradeoffs to any medical treatment ever. If you have depression, you are to take drugs, period. If you have problems with some structural aspect of your body, you are to have surgery right this very minute. As a result, we can't mention possible treatments for his medical problems to her until we've talked through all the options (and now you probably know who I'm talking about, but I don't feel right saying so on an open journal post) and decided what he wants and is going to do, because otherwise she will seize on something and run with it.

I wish she was right, but she isn't, and it's extremely obnoxious.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

[redbird]

It's not really a valid question, in my experience--I lose intelligence when I'm depressed, and I suspect that worrying about losing aspects of intelligence can be a depression trigger.

One odd thought: I lose nouns in spoken conversation, but not typed (email, LJ, Usenet, IM). You might want to experiment and see if they're still there for you, using that retrieval mechanism. It doesn't help that much when I'm talking to someone in person or on the phone--especially if I don't have a keyboard handy--but it's reassuring to know that they're still there, and that I can get at them.

Neither?

[davidschroth.livejournal.com]

Given that that's probably not one of the choices, I'd guess the answer is very specific to the person answering the question.

I'd rather be depressed, but then there's no evidence that I suffer from anything other than occasional situational depression, and I find myself losing nouns and names regardless.

What a drag it is getting older...

[laurel]

I'm the keeper of nouns for my Mom.

Kevin seems to be the keeper of nouns for me.

I've lost a lot of them, I usually end up saying "thingie" a lot or I just let sentences trail off. More with Kevin, though. I usually don't start sentences with other folks if I find myself unable to think the noun before I speak it. Usually. It depends.

When I was a kid and had lots of health problems, I used to envy my brother so much. He was the healthy one, the one with straight teeth, the one who only barely needed glasses. He rarely got sick.

Lately I find myself envying people who don't have any form of mental illness. I wonder what it'd be like to have "normal" brain chemistry? Is there really such a thing?

Anyway. I know what you mean and yes, it sucketh.

[homemakerj.livejournal.com]

Have you considered peri-menopause? It's on the list of symptoms. Foggy thinking. I remember it well myself, she says at 57. My girlfriend and I had lunch. We tried to converse.

"Do you remember whatchamacallit?"
"Um, give me another clue."
"Oh, you know, that thingie, the...the...what's her face's cousin, what's her name had it. You remember..."
"I think I do..."

We giggled all the way home. We figured the people in the restaurant must have thought we were nuts. We understood perfectly what each other were saying, but we couldn't remember the words. For me, it passed. At the time, I was terrified that I was already going senile.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I was going to make the same comment. I'm 38, in very good health, on no meds but birth control and a multi-vitamin, and have been having more trouble with remembering words and with short-term memory. Apparently those things are common symptoms of perimenopause. (In my case, I'm a little young for it, but then I hit menarche very late and starting late apparently does link to stopping early.)

[jolest.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I find that one of the early-warning symptoms that I simply haven't been getting enough sleep is that I start to loose nouns. (On rare occasions other words, but mostly nouns.) It will frequently happen when I haven't even been consciously aware that I've been shorting myself on sleep. (And I DO short myself on sleep far too often because I usually can subsist on 6 hours of sleep for several weeks without problems, I tend to be a late-night person by inclination, and I have high-speed-internet at home... These combine into making it easy to want to make it 4-5 hours of sleep a night instead of 6.)

At first it greatly disturbed me. Lately, I've been trying to just take it as a "wake up call" (pun intended) and get more sleep for a few days. Don't know if this would help you, but I hope it does.