Carol:
I have very good long term memory, but my short term memory has suffered in recent years. I'm tempted to say that it is simply because I'm getting older (65 years), and that may indeed account for some of my difficulty, but this clearly isn't the whole story.
About three years ago, the medicine that worked for me so well for forty years became unavailable. My doctor and I began immediately to look for a replacement. It took us about a year to find a new combination of medicines that worked and a second year for me to fully recover.
During these two years, I often suffered from sedation caused by one or another of the new medicines we tried. I've learned from this episode that the sedation seriously affected my short term memory.
It would be funny if it hadn't been so debilitating. My wife would buy a DVD each Sunday and I would watch it every day for a week, never remembering that I'd seen it they day before. Each time I watched it, the movie was like new.
With good new replacement medications, my difficulty with memory has been greatly reduced. There was one medication, however, that I'm convinced has caused some permanent loss of my short term memory capacity, but oddly enough only after I stopped taking it. I've talked some others who have said this medication has had the same effect on them.
Another interesting phenomena occurred. With a significantly reduced short term memory capacity, time flew by at an alarming rate. Things I thought had happened a month ago often had taken place six or nine months ago. I still have some difficulty with this.
It is my opinion now that schizophrenia, when not under control through medications, can cause significant short term memory problems. And I believe that some antipsychotics exacerbate the problem.
Sometimes it seems that I am alive and doing well in the not too distant past, and from that vantage point I'm watching time fly by at significant speed, with some things happening so fast they never get committed to memory.
Robin
reply
Carol:
I have very good long term memory, but my short term memory has suffered in recent years. I'm tempted to say that it is simply because I'm getting older (65 years), and that may indeed account for some of my difficulty, but this clearly isn't the whole story.
About three years ago, the medicine that worked for me so well for forty years became unavailable. My doctor and I began immediately to look for a replacement. It took us about a year to find a new combination of medicines that worked and a second year for me to fully recover.
During these two years, I often suffered from sedation caused by one or another of the new medicines we tried. I've learned from this episode that the sedation seriously affected my short term memory.
It would be funny if it hadn't been so debilitating. My wife would buy a DVD each Sunday and I would watch it every day for a week, never remembering that I'd seen it they day before. Each time I watched it, the movie was like new.
With good new replacement medications, my difficulty with memory has been greatly reduced. There was one medication, however, that I'm convinced has caused some permanent loss of my short term memory capacity, but oddly enough only after I stopped taking it. I've talked some others who have said this medication has had the same effect on them.
Another interesting phenomena occurred. With a significantly reduced short term memory capacity, time flew by at an alarming rate. Things I thought had happened a month ago often had taken place six or nine months ago. I still have some difficulty with this.
It is my opinion now that schizophrenia, when not under control through medications, can cause significant short term memory problems. And I believe that some antipsychotics exacerbate the problem.
Sometimes it seems that I am alive and doing well in the not too distant past, and from that vantage point I'm watching time fly by at significant speed, with some things happening so fast they never get committed to memory.
Robin
reply