Being positive and all that crap

Well, it's sunny.  I am wearing my favourite turquoise shirt. I can still see well out of my left eye. I'm almost done a huge project. I managed to make goodies for church. People seemed to like them.

I did bring the goodies half an hour late, though, having forgotten the time of church. Because I've only been about 10 times already. Last week, though, I had a meeting a half hour later, so that information supplanted what I had had in my brain.

I got the results of my neuropsych assessment the other day. The results weren't that surprising, but the "instructions to employers" made me want to sit down and cry. Apparently I am so distractible I need small chunks of information as a time. I need people to look me in the eye to ensure I am paying attention. I can't be expected to do boring jobs. If I have a project, I should plan to do it in 10 minute segments, alternating with other jobs and breaks, so that I can maintain focus.

Well, heck, I've been doing that for ages, just not deliberately.  I start something, get distracted, start something else, realize I've forgotten to finish the other thing, and so forth.  I frantically try to order my environment, but I get distracted and put down a paper here, my glasses there. Then I can't see, so I go looking for my glasses.  And after I find them I have no idea where the paper is. Maybe the dog ate it. At least I think I have a dog. He's here somewhere.

Some days, as they say, it isn't worth chewing through the restraints.

Today, walking without my cane and experiencing total fallabout by the time I'd got halfway around the route, I wished for restraints.  And a comfy bed.
Today, as I hustled into church late, I wished for restraints, or a calendar that beeped at me more regularly. I need to put alarms on EVERYTHING and that is annoying.  Especially as I forget to enter stuff into my calendar or add the alarm.
And then there are those moments of "inappropriate sharing", when I wish my mouth had a bit of a restraint. But that would require the memory to remember what effect my talking had had before, plus the ability to read others, which I seem to be losing.
Aw heck.  Better go out the dinner on, and then sit right by the oven, so I don't set fire to it. It's just SUCH a good mental day.
And we won't get into the pain. I wish I could forget THAT.
Oh Goethe, you rock.

Examining the brain...

Went for my neuropsychiatric testing the other day - a full day of brain tests and questions of vocabulary and memory things and attention stuff. Was totally exhausting, and I could barely drive home - arrived back, called the kennel to take care of the dog for another night, and sat, too tired to eat or move for the evening before I fell into bed.
So, what are the tests?
Some of them were silly for someone with MS - depression inventories aren't accurate if fatigue is your constant companion.  You do sleep more than usual, you do cut back on social activities, you do lose interest in sex and other things you enjoy just cos you are pole-axed tired most of the time.
Some of them were silly for someone with an extensive vocabulary and multiple degrees. Defining words that are monosyllabic is not a challenge, even if I am slipping. Reading familiar words aloud would only be a problem if I had severe muscle involvement or significant dementia.
Math - more challenging.  Trying to figure out patterns - difficult.  Understanding instructions for one test was almost impossible for some reason - I started off wrong, and when the kindly psychologist explained it again to me, I still had difficulty processing what I needed to do.
Paired words weren't too hard, although it took me 4 tries to get most of them. What was most astonishing was the complete vanishing of the information - usually one has a "tip of the brain" phenomenon, where you try to retrieve things and a variety of options present themselves.  No options presented themselves. It was dark inside there. I could hear crickets.
Counting backwards was tough until I figured out the pattern.  Took me a while, and if I did the math correctly, the letters I was supposed to remember were not available to my conscious mind - yet I could say them, often. Weird. It's like when I type and words come but my mind is blank. Very very strange.
I think, generally speaking, I did okay on most things, but it wasn't fun. If I had had to do anything after the testing, I would have crashed. I was almost in tears by the end of the day.
I should point out kindly Psychologist did offer to break the session if I was tired, but I wanted to get an idea for how I would perform after a full day. I'm still tired now, two days later.
I get my report in a couple of weeks, just before I leave. I'm wondering what they'll show.