Cognitively Coping?

My thoughts regarding Cognitively Coping, are somewhat confused at best. As I try to analyze what is happening, if I think too long and too hard then that only serves at times to make matters worse. I know when I am talking to anyone else who can’t quite get to what they want to say, that I will often recommend that they move past that thought and put it to one side. They can then carry on the conversation a few minutes later perhaps and not be pressuring their memory. For me, sometimes the thought buried deep in my brain, resurfaces but then again sometimes it does not.

I do find it difficult when I have trouble doing things that I should be able to do easily. At work the other day, I was trying to print out an email and for the life of me I could not remember how to do so. I summoned up my courage and told one of my colleagues and she said just do ‘Control P” and that works for her. I did that and yes, it did work, but it did not solve the problem of not remembering how I would usually do it.

Last night I was trying to turn my cellphone off. I held down the button – as I thought I had done many times before – and it kept going to the Google Assistant – and I could not for the life of me understand why this was happening and why it wasn’t working the way I thought it should. I went to my husband and said that I was worried about myself and if my brain was playing up. He seemed to think I was maybe blaming this on myself, but that it could just as easy have been the phone updating and changing things on me. I have to say, I wasn’t completely convinced but we managed in the end to turn the phone off.

There have been a few times lately where I have found that I can’t remember things as well as I should and this does concern me. Perhaps it’s just tiredness, after a particularly busy week. I certainly hope so!

Like my husband said, there is a risk that just because we know we have a compromised brain, it doesn’t mean that every little bit of confusion or forgetfulness is necessarily to be blamed on good old Parkies.

For me the cognitive part of this condition, more than the physical part is the part of this thing that scares me the most. If I can’t reason things out. If I can’t make myself understood. If I can’t retain information. All these things would be very difficult to manage. It made me think of Stephen Hawking a very well known and respected English theoretical physicist and cosmologist. Not that I have a brain even half as intelligent as him, but I have seen quite a few programmes about him and even though his body was very much compromised, he still very much retained his intellect and his ability to talk to others. He still had the respect of others and that would have been important to him, I’m sure; He did need a device to help him speak, but there was no question that he lacked any ability to think and understand complex information.

I do notice today as I type, that – although I am basically a touch typist – I am typing words wrongly and I am having to correct quite a bit as I type. It is just as well I am not back in my earlier days when typed on a typewriter and things had to be corrected with Twink. I think these days I would go through reams of extra paper and lots of Twink or Tippex (many of you won’t know what they are) to correct my errors. Not at all the standard which I have always aspired to.

I guess all I can do is to constantly challenge my brain, with brain games (Lumosity), Wordle and Words with Friends to keep my brain and memory working as hard as they can. Changes in our brain function are inevitable, but hopefully by working it with brain and word games and social interaction, this may keep it in reasonable order for longer.

I wonder what ways others use to stimulate their brain?