Lamenting My Impaired Intellect

I hate it when I have trouble with verbal fluency. And memory. It is so frustrating. And scary, because that is something that could affect my job performance. And scary because my intellect is ME!

Sensory:

-Pins and needles: 2, left butt/thigh, left foot, also butt and legs when sitting--doesn't matter if the chair is padded or I've only been sitting for a few minutes

-Tingles: 0 I think

-Paresthesias (burning): 3, left foot--I took my mid-afternoon dose of gabapentin late, and my foot got kind of riled up

-Paresthesias (other): 1, some mild electric shocks in the back of my left thigh

-Numbness: 1, losing feeling in my lower limbs easily depending on body position

-Vision: 1, still have the floaters in both eyes. More in the lower part of my vision now, which is nice. I used to have a stringy ball in the middle of my vision.

-Nerve pain: 1, left leg

Motor:

-Gait: 3, hard to walk in my Danskos. Gait gets worse as the day goes along and varies with the amount of walking I've done.

-Sore muscles: 4, quads, arms (esp. right), calves

-Fine motor: 3

-Weak muscles: 4

-Spasticity: 3 for rectus femoris, 4 for gastrocnemius, bilaterally

Cognitive:

-Language processing: 3

-Memory: 4

-Attention: 1

-Confusion: 3

General:

-Fatigue: 5

-Balance: 4--I don't know. It's so bad in dim light (BAD in the dark), and it's noticeable when I get up from sitting. Worse in the morning. But a lot of the day it doesn't bother me. I'm more careful when I get up. It's not a big problem most of the day.

-Sleep: 5, got less then 7 hours. :( I woke up at 5:00 am with a nightmare. I had trouble settling down (and remembering that I wanted to sleep--stupid dementia) but was almost asleep again when my roommate's alarm went off at 5:30. Then I was almost asleep but she opened the bedroom door and woke me up--6:00? Just one thing after another. Finally fell asleep again but had to get up less than an hour later. No surprise that now I'm BEAT.

-Bladder: 3

Grieving: I started to cry when discussing my dementia on an MS forum. The tears sprang up very quickly. I almost cried this morning about it, too. I need to work it through this more.