Feeling of diminishment

When you look at the schematics and nothing is coming up, I wonder if there is some attention deficit there that was caused by the complications and lack of oxygen to the brain. Most likely if you could concentrate enough you'd be able to make the connections in your brain to understand the schematic. The zoning out could also be part of that, not able to concentrate on your surroundings.

The brain is basically as series of pathways and chemistry. I think what happened is that after the surgery it became unbalanced and is not able to make the pathways it once did, at least not at the speed it once had. I wouldn't be suprised if some psychiatric meds would help you regain that back. I think a neurologist is the best way to go and maybe even psychiatrist.

 

You know playing games is good mental stimulation as well. Try picking up an rpg that you've beaten before or a game that you mastered back in the day but haven't played in years, get those old neurons firing again. It gets you thinking, gets you making decisions, etc.

 

When Richard Hammond from Top Gear crashed the Jet car he had something similar. It was said your mind is like a an office. All the info you have gained is all neatly filed away. The trauma or in your case lack of oxygen during the Op is like someone has broken in and ransacked your office. The info is all there but you have to find it.
Brain training games and general simulation of the brain helps it to recover.

 

I know exactly how that feels. I was diagnosed as ADD (say what you want, I don't really care about the diagnosis more so that I get something to fix the very obvious inability to pay attention to anything that isn't HOLY SHIT FUCKING FASCINATING TELL ME MORE OR I'LL RIP OUT YOUR EYE WITH A SPOON sort of topic that we all have).

I was working on my math homework the other day, hands down my worst topic easily. Pop some Adderall, go to town and get it done but a few problems. Few hours after a very obvious come down and I look at the notes but that don't make shit for sense to me leading to be frustrated but not depressed as I know whats wrong here and how to fix it. If I didn't know what was wrong or how to fix it, you better believe I'd be down in the dumps at minimum.

I wouldn't be surprised if the lack of oxygen resulted in some form of memory loss or a partial wipe of the TOC of your brain's file system per se. I am not a doctor but I do spend copious time with medical textbooks and such. Feeling like you've lost some of that TOC could easily lead to mild depression which will negate your ability somehow to relearn/rediscover what you already know.

I'd do what you're doing and go get checked out as something clearly isn't what it should be. Given your quality of life is geared around understanding technical bits someone might be owing you some cash.

 

I know what you mean too, I got an A+ in Japanese in high school, a decade or so later, all I could remember from it is how to say "she has big breasts" and count from one to ten But.. I didn't put it to use, I think it got bumped out of the 'stack'. I could still get by in Mexico though.

And electronics is the same, I was even a student teacher in my high school electronics class the second year I took it. Then went on for an a degree in EET. Now I have to look everything up, even simple filters that should be committed to memory.

Is it brain cell degeneration? or simply that if you don't use it you lose it? It is easy to get caught up in life trying to keep your head above water. My line of work doesn't call on those skills, but I can recite SQL queries on the spot

 

It depends on the person I'd say. If smoking weed doesn't interfere with your daily routine and your ability to be good at what you do then why not? I've seen countless examples of drug-liking individuals who are brilliant and good at what they do - even Winston Churchill was an alcoholic but my, what a great mind!

 

Are you still playing piano, Kevin?

Music is a great way to stimulate the brain. Also it can get you into a good mood instantly.

 

I ve tried ritalin as a recreational thing but I wouldn't be surprised if I was diagnosed with ADD as well.
I have always had a terribly short attention span (a cycling of many thoughts in random order) but I ve never been to the doc about it - I even got through Law school. That said, do you think I could improve my working habits with a prescription such as Adderal?

 

I ever had "brain fog" for almost a year, a result of medication I took. The symptoms were a lot like what you described. Like there was a blanket covering your thoughts, like things are having trouble leaving an imprint on your brain.
With me, it was caused by a serious hormone imbalance, which was the result of the previous medication doing something to the Hypothalamus, a part of the brain.

Of course, such symptoms can be caused by lots of things, but if you are going to get a check, let them measure your Free Testosterone, Testosterone, DHT, Estrogen and Estradiol levels. An imbalance in those can cause the symptoms you are experiencing now.

During that year I found the best way to deal with it was by relaxing, removing as much stress as possible out of my life, going to a spa and such. It might help you to feel better.

 

Bit late to the party, but I get this all the time with programming in work, I will zone out while coding, do hundreds of lines of code, come back to it the next day and not understand what I was trying to achieve the day before (I'm not one for writing comments while coding). I wouldn't say the problem you are having is necessarily to do with your condition, it could just like what I said above, repetition for years (coding, console modding, etc) can remove the need for the brain to spend as long working on something so you are doing a lot of it unconciously, hence why you can't follow something you did when you go back to it later on.

Anyway, hope things improve.

 

if in the worst case, the lack of oxygen caused some damage to your brain, its not the end of the world. i have been recovering from a brain injury for a number of years and i have yet to feel fully recovered. in my case i had to start with the basics all over again, i lost everything. it took a lot of time and determination, i still can not program well or always speak coherently, i used to be really good at math now im lucky if i can consistently grasp algebra. i feel mentally retarded most days, and some days like a zombie...walking around in a fog. but, you are constantly improving. i dont think its a permanent condition, you work at it you will improve. shit just takes time. what helped/helps me a lot is mainly just exercise and sleep. then working through logic puzzles, meditating...and playing video games does help. something else i like to do is taking apart junked electronics, figuring out how they function then reassembling it into working order. i think it helps me improve my cognitive ability as well my mood, the feeling of accomplishment when you fix something that was broken is pretty nice. i dont always understand something at first on paper, many times i will read something over and over again and not get it. even when people try to explain it to me it just goes right through my head. but when i physically see it, when i have it in my hands, something clicks in my brain. so i often carry around a small notebook, so i can draw things out. dont know if any of that helps.

 

Quite possible. Almost everyone, ADD or not, has their habits improved with amphetamines due to the nature of amphetamines releasing dopamine making boring activities a bit more interesting. As a result I know plenty of people who would kill to have my monthly script just to get through the day but dose up with coffee instead.

Adderall is merely the L and D isomer of amphetamines in a mixture which some people find to be displeasing. Makes me easily agitated myself. Dexedrine is older and is purely the D isomer and works better for me. I still get agitated but usually because I REALLY want to work on something and someone will want my attention. Thing is most psychiatrists don't like doling out medication without complete testing and others hand it out like candy. Mine seems to but then again I've got years of documentation to back up what I have to say as well as grades to show it helps.

Since you got through law school it might be a hard sell to a psychiatrist that you need it to function (most people with ADD have it so bad that only their top 5 or so topics they find interesting can get them a stable job or education. I have an extremely difficult time with math, English (though you can see my writing skills are quite impeccable if I do say so myself. Just that I can't write a comparative essay to please any of my English profs past getting a C+ in the class) and Philosophy. The lattermost likely because I just don't buy into the idea of god and don't fully understand which god various philosophers are reaching out to given the name is thrown around quite a bit.

Math I seem to mix up quite a bit, example: the other day I had to raise 3 to the second power which should yield 9. Instead I multiplied 3 by 2 and got 6. Thankfully I double checked the basic calculations for the problem and caught it BEFORE I turned in my mid-term. Without the medication I'd likely have not noticed it upon a second or even third examination because my brain will just do the same thing wrong over and over again as I don't see to have any built in mental error correction.

Never tried Ritalin myself but wouldn't mind giving it a shot if I ever could find some.

I had that too, but then I found out that being ~100lbs overweight made me into a type 2 diabetic with a blood sugar level of 384mg/dl (normal for be is about 80-120). That got quickly resolved with medication and after a while of being fed up with pills and the random issues they can cause (take your glyburide at breakfast without eating? Oh the cold sweats and shakes you will get by lunch are awesome!) I lost 130lbs only to gain it all back ~3 years later due to laziness and a girlfriend....le sigh.

The only point to this is that often times the same symptoms have multiple causes. Could be the lack of oxygen busted your pancreas or your hypothalamus or <insert essential organ here regulating hormones>. My dad has hypothyroidism and on top of making it harder for you to be physically active in any capacity as well as mental you can easily pack on the pounds without realizing it. Likely the cause for him is just the fact he is approaching 60 though.

Also Kevin, you could look into nootropics if that is your sort of bag:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nootropic

I have no personal experience with them beyond coffee and Adderall/Dexedrine and can't say how well they work or even if they do work but a lot of people swear by them and a few have some medical standing. Credible research behind them is sparse at best for most of the stuff listed but hey if it is purely placebo effect it'll benefit you as long as you don't get something with mercury in it.