This is my first "what's going on currently in my life" post on the new boards. I'm copying what I wrote in my latest note on facebook, but since no one comments over there, hopefully you all (the finest and most intelligent group of folk I am aware of online) will be able to lend me some support.
"The past 24 hours have been dominated by those three minutes that I do not remember passing through. Yes, this is new, and it is much more problematic than my earlier issues with memory.
I was at work (Collegiate, a local private school) and I was serving lunch to the pre-schoolers. I work 3 lunches every day... this was the first. Everything went fine (as fine as can be hoped for with 35 pre-schoolers around food in a small room), and we got them out in good order. Myself and my two co-workers got to work setting up for the second lunch (kindergarteners). The kids arrived on time and got to eating. Their lunch lasts for around 25 minutes.
When their lunch ends, I put down trays for their empty milk cartons, then I get the kids to line up at the trash can and I dump out their trays before sending them to another line leading outside. Us three workers spend the next few minutes preparing the next group's lunches, then the next kids come in and we start the whole process one last time.
That last paragraph there? Yeah... I don't remember any of it. And it's not like I gradually forgot in the last several hours. No. This was like time-travel.
One moment I was standing up, looking at one class of kids. In the very next moment, I was sitting down at the desk, looking at an entirely different class of kids. There was no transition. There is no 'fogginess' in my mind... as far as I'm concerned, those three or four minutes of my life do not exist. It's a black hole in my memory.
The first thing I really remember afterwards is just sitting down like a sludge. I was kind of just staring off into nothing, and then it hit me that something was very, very wrong. It took a few seconds before I realized that I had just skipped ahead quite a ways. Practically hysterical, I immediately excused myself from the lunch room and called my mom who wrote down everything I said in case I forgot that I'd called her or in case I forgot that anything odd had happened.
Once that last class left, I asked my coworkers what I'd done in those minutes I couldn't recall. They told me that I had, in fact, acted perfectly normal. I took the empty milk cartons, I dumped food trays into the trash, and all the other menial stuff I do many times a day, every day of the week.
A week or two ago - as these issues with my memory spiraled way out of control - my left eye started having short spasms. Nothing longer than a second two, at a rate of around two or three times per minute. I assumed a correlation between that and my faltering memory and got some blood work done on my thyroid again. My thyroid has been extremely, uh... pathetic... in recent years and I've learned to spot the signs of its lagging. The results came back on Thursday of last week saying that my thyroid level of activity was 'dangerously low' and that I needed to see a specialist as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the only specialist in town won't be free until July. My family doctor put me on some temporary medicine to hold me over until then.
Even on that medicine, my eye is now shaking more than ever before. Each spasm is longer, more intense, and generally more vision-obscuring than what I went through last week. Either this medicine isn't doing its job or there's something else going wrong somewhere inside me.
This is the first time through all of this that I am beginning to grow afraid. Forgetting conversations or forgetting what I was about to say, do, or whatever is one thing... but whole gaps in memory is downright dangerous. It's scary, too. I'm trying really hard to keep a hold on myself. I'm staying as alert as possible at all times, trying desperately to maintain a sense of self as I begin to feel my innards tumble apart."
As much as I eventually would like to have children, I'm not sure that's what would be best. I have too many physical issues it seems to warrant passing down my DNA. I guess I could adopt.
Topic: What a Trip Life Is. (Read 975 times)
