There has been quite a bit of talking the last few days from MCSGal and mcslearningtoliveadifferentlife about what our canary is and about losing words when in a reaction. I posted this originally on June 23, 2012 and then posted it again in my Catch-Up Mondays on July 28, 2013 with the title At a Loss For Words. I still lose words despite the length of time it has been since my original exposure at work. I lose words during a reaction and when I am not in a reaction. The mold just messed with my brain. I have difficulty typing certain words. Despite being able to write these words and spell them to you out loud I type them wrong every single time. I want to type a blog post and not correct anything in it and let everyone see how I truly type before I take the time to go back and make corrections. One of the words that I spell wrong every single time is you. When I type it is always appears as yoiu. I have been very far behind in posting new blog posts. I have many ideas but just can’t seem to get myself back to the task of writing. Instead I have been cleaning house, something that is routine and helps me deal with all that has happened. I promise to be back soon in full swing soon. In the meantime there may be some reblogs of some amazing bloggers I follow and a few extra Catch-Up Mondays.
Don’t you just hate it when you lose or can’t retrieve the word you want from your brain? Since becoming ill I have found it is a regular occurrence. I will be talking to someone and in the middle of a sentence I can’t come up with the word I want to use. Try as I might, the word won’t come. Sometimes I have been successful by trying to find another word that means something similar. In the middle of a reaction as I was in yesterday, I was hard pressed to come up with the other word.
What was the word you say? I don’t know. I still don’t know. I was trying to convey how when dealing with someone I would just respond very vaguely without giving either a yes or no answer. As I was searching for the word I became tearful. I tried and tried and finally came up with equanimity (calmness, poise, serenity, self-possession). It seemed to work but wasn’t really the word I wanted to use. Maybe I was wanting to use apathetic (showing little or no emotion, indifferent, not interested or concerned). As I am writing this definition I think that is the word I wanted to use.
As hard as I try to retrain my brain by reading, crossword puzzles, etc. I still lose words in conversation even more so in the midst of a reaction. I still find when I type that I transpose the same letters in certain words over and over again even though I know how to spell the words. Yesterday when I was in the reaction my handwriting became hard to read (see picture for a sample of my handwriting in my journal during a reaction) and I spelled things wrong, my right hand became very cold and I had a much harder time expressing myself.
I have been told that mold mycotoxins can damage brain cells. Sometimes you regain some of the processes you lost but usually not all of them. When I was first exposed to mold (didn’t know it then) I would take phone messages and then look at them and realize they didn’t make sense and have to re-write them. Sometimes my boss would come in and ask me what the message meant even after I am sure it had been rewritten. My handwriting was also deteriorating . At the time I would become frustrated over this but it never dawned on me that something serious was going on with me and my brain.
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