Right before the holidays, my doctors put me on medical leave for a few months. I’m still trying to come to terms with being away from my team at work, and from a job I love – and hoping that this is just a temporary roadblock in my life. Particularly because of this newest diagnosis, still part of my patient journey with a rare disease named Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS).
The reason I’m now on medical leave is proof that CRPS lives up to the word ‘complex’ in its name… I’ve now been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, or MCI. In some ways the diagnosis was good news, because I’d been terrified that I was suffering from early-onset dementia or even Alzheimer’s Disease.
But in reality, it wasn’t such good news. The MCI is a result of my CRPS, which is considered to be both an autoimmune disease and a neuro-inflammatory condition. I haven’t had the heart to really delve into the research yet – mainly because I’m really have trouble with concentration and focus, which are symptoms of the MCI – but I hope to most more soon on links between MCI and CRPS.
In the meantime, it seems that MCI is a result of the neuro-inflammatory side of this condition. Unfortunately, that doesn’t signal any reduction in the autoimmune symptoms; the MCI is simply a new CRPS challenge, added on to so many others.
I’m still hopeful that the MCI may have been triggered, or perhaps simply worsened, during a period of intense work with multiple deadlines and projects coming to a close as part of my career. I’ve always had a tendency to push past fatigue, whether at work or in outdoor sports, so maybe I’ve been pushing myself too hard.
It’s difficult to rein myself in though, to curb my enthusiasm (not the tv show!) for my job. I’ve been extremely lucky to have a career about which I’m passionate, to be able to do work that is meaningful to me. Within a very small field – biomedical ethics, also called bioethics – I’ve been able to carve out a niche for myself; a role that allows me to help patients across Canada. Ethically.
So I’m hoping that, after a few weeks of rest, my mind will soon be back in action – recharged and ready to return to my beloved job. That I’ll soon be able to get back to being surrounded by colleagues and friends, back in my gorgeous open-concept office space, back at my standing desk… back where I belong!
In the meantime, though, I wanted to give you a little taste of what MCI means, in real life. It’s going to have taken me almost three days to write this little post for my blog. That’s because, even if I feel well-rested, the words that come out – either when spoken or written – aren’t the ones I mean to use. That might be fine, if I knew that I was using the wrong word.
But I don’t. In my mind, I’ve used the correct word, but in reality I’ve said or written the wrong one – something that simply doesn’t make any sense. “Elephant of” for “element of” is one that stands out to me. Or telling my husband that I’d like to pick up some “asbestos” for dinner, when I meant to say “asparagus”.
If someone doesn’t tell me that I’ve said, or written, something out of context then I simply won’t know. This means that I have to re-read every blog post, several times, before I publish it. And I try to get someone else to re-read each draft as well – thanks to my husband for all his help with this!
Unfortunately my MCI doesn’t present only in language. It also affects my concentration and focus, as I mentioned early. Here’s an example. Yesterday afternoon I made a pot of vegetable stew for dinner, with cannellini beans. The spices I use taste better when the recipe is made a few hours in advance, and then reheated.
So I moved the pot to another element on the stove, and then decided to make myself a coffee and a snack. Let’s call it my three o’clock break ‘-) I put a piece of multigrain bread into the toaster, and pulled out some unsweetened peanut butter. With banana slices on top, this is a treat for me; one of my favourite snacks.
We have a set of small plastic mix’n’match dishes from IKEA, which we use on our patio in summertime because they’re unbreakable. These plates and bowls are in bright and cheerful colours, so I often use them in winter time when the weather is blah.
I’d pulled out a bright green plastic plate, and set it down on the stove for a second when my piece of toast popped up. And melted it. I’d forgotten to turn off the element after moving my soup pot to another one on the stove-top.
That’s MCI, for me. Some of my family members and friends keep telling me that this type of thing happens to them as well. What’s different with MCI is that I did the same thing last week. And I might do the same thing tomorrow. I have trouble holding onto a thought, and once it’s gone it doesn’t come back.
So cross your fingers for me, that the MCI is temporary, and that my mind comes back. Because I really miss it.