Originally published May 20, 2015. Since then my cognitive function has made a fairly complete comeback, well except accounting for normal aging. I was reminded of this essay by my experience with augmented coding. That “normal aging” stuff left me without the patience to get set up for coding. With the genie, though, I’m happy to dive into most any project. It’s like wearing an exoskeleton but for my brain. The point remains—don’t take cognition for granted.
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When I was about 10 years old I read Flowers for Algernon, the story of a mentally challenged man who is subjected to an IQ-increasing treatment. The catch is [spoiler alert] that the treatment only works temporarily. The story is written as a diary, with spelling and vocabulary tracking his changing mental abilities. As a child, I loved being smart, knowing things, understanding things. The story was exciting because I could see how much smarter I was going to be and I could see all the new ways I could think and the worlds that thinking would open up.
When I re-read Flowers for Algernon recently I was just sad. The second half of the story, where his mind is going away, is just brutal, especially when he can remember how smart he was but knows it's gone for good.
I'm going through something eerily similar.
The Symptoms
Over the past 5-7 years I've noticed a cluster of neurological symptoms—serious short-term memory loss, desire for social isolation, face blindness (seeing someone I know quite well but not having any sense of recognition), inability to deal with complexity, and social disinhibition (pissing people off unnecessarily and not being able to understand what I did wrong). These symptoms affect my coding and my relationships.
The Diagnosis
After years of waffling and knowing something was up and watching it get worse I finally went to the Mayo Clinic (in network, yeah!) to get a complete workup. After being poked, prodded, scanned, and bled I got good-ish news: it's none of the fatal stuff, no tumor, no fronto-temporal dementia. For reasons no one understands, 20% of the people who present with early front-temporal dementia symptoms never progress. I seem to be in that camp—no nasty mutations, no visible brain atrophy. I have to get checked annually, but this is my new normal.
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