After my last post a few days ago I realized I had already posted on that same subject the week earlier.  This is a by product of having bad short term memory.  Short term memory for me is one of those things that goes on and off as fast as you can flip a light switch.  This is one of the unfortunate side effects of having my right temporal lobe removed.  Amongst a few side effects of my surgery this one is definitely the most challenging!

For those of you who have chatted with me online you know my typing is horrendous.  That is caused in part by my brain thinking “type this” but not remembering to tell my fingers to do it!  I might type wrong words, type the same word twice because I forgot I just typed it, or simply forget which key I pushed last!  Alone with bad typing I am blessed with the inability to remember simple things.  I fear one day my husband will get tired of being my personal memory storage, as I am always telling him things we need to remember.  I tell him what I need to get at the store, what I need to do, and I even tell him “I know I’ll forget this so will you remind me”.  Of course if he forgets these things it causes a problem!  My memory has literally become like a strainer, great for draining things but not for storing them!  The funniest thing is I never know what it is that will fall through all those tiny holes.  For example, every Thursday I ask my husband what time he goes to work on Friday, since that varies.  There are weeks he has to tell me a dozen times.  That same scenario is repeated on Friday for his Saturday start time.  I cannot count how many times he has told me “I already told you that” only to forget I asked him a little while later

The most frustrating part of losing my memory is that I use to be the one to remember everything!  I never wrote anything down, I never used a calendar or appointment book, I never struggled to remember peoples names, and I rarely took notes in school.  My memory is one of the things that made me good at my job.  Now, my memory is what makes me so bad at so many things.  At first I cried when I would forget simple things, like the 3 things I went into the store to buy.  Now I am happy when I can remember those 3 things!  I have learned to have a schedule, not wait until the last minute, write things down, and ask others to remember things for me.  My memory may not be so good, but I have learned to ask for help, which is better then doing it all alone.  It is when we are at our weakest that we learn the most about ourselves, and I learned I had been to proud to ask for help from others.  This is certainly not the case anymore, for many things, including asking my husband to be my back up memory.  There are days that without that help I would have no idea what day of the week it was.