When I was with my brother Stew, when he had advanced Parkinson's,
he had trouble talking. And eventually, even eating.
What I wondered was whether he had trouble thinking, or was it just expressing thoughts?
When we get to that stage, are we trapped in our thoughts, and unable to express them,
or, does our thinking follow a more simple path? I am aware that we become unable to recognize people.
I've always had trouble remembering names, and honestly don't know if it's any worse.
I'm somewhere along that path, and, if I can remember, I'll try to record my progress.
10/23 - In conversations, and even writing, for a while now, I seem to have more trouble remembering a word
I want to use. The Kaiser person says "it's normal" as we age, but it seems worse than I think it should be.
When driving, I've always had a mental map in my head, and not made mistakes.
When there was an obstacle, I always knew how to get around it.
Lately, I've taken the wrong freeway exit a few times. That never happened before.
When driving, today, I have to actively think about which way to go to get somewhere.
That used to be automatic. I just knew, seemingly without even thinking.
And my memory is declining. If I'm off to do one task, and get interrupted for another,
more often than not, I forget the first. If I go grocery shopping, one item is my limit.
I'm not sure I was ever good at such, but it is much worse today.
I find that I don't feel like coding, or rather, I don't feel like I want to do any coding.
That's a significant change. The challenge of working on a program, and keeping track of several
different code interactions was, for me, something I really liked.
I find that I don't want to do it today. There are 2-3 coding things I'd like to do,
both with html, and with an assembler program I wrote, but this is about what I can manage.
I did the BerryBest Family Farm sample website -- that might be my limit.
Occasionally I do a few online IQ tests, just to see how I do.
Kind of see if there's any grease left in the crankcase.
Sometimes it's close to inline with what I'd have done 10 years ago. Sometimes it's lower.
Maybe 10-20-30 points lower. I'm aware that free online IQ tests are not the be-all, end-all.
But if I do 2-3-4-5 of 'em, the average should be fairly close.
Ever since I've been programming, it always felt like I was smarter later in the day.
I've read, that's not the case. But it still feels like that's true.
Or did a few months ago, when I still did some coding.