Rheumatoid Arthritis Support Group

I have noticed that I'm not so good at recalling events that occur when I'm in extreme pain (the level 9-10 pain).

When I saw my rheumy for the first time, I was probably at at level 9.5 in pain. He gave me a depomedral shot and I only know that because he told me on my second visit.

In May I went to the ER with level 10 pain and they did blood tests. I don't ever remember being stuck with a needle to have blood drawn.

After the ER incident, I was off work for a few weeks. When I returned and saw the work I did before I left (when I was in so much pain), it was like someone else had done it.

A quick google search tells me this isn't so unusual. Has anyone else noticed this?

Anne

Oh, yeah. Been there. In my case, I noticed a big difference in my concentration and memory, after I finished chemo 10 years ago. While I was on chemo-I couldn't even fill out the form to receive unemployment. The lady called me and when I explained, she helped me out. Before that, I was a champion form "filler outer". Not then. Now I can do it, but when in pain or too much going on, I swear I have acquired ADD.

Bits had some very scary things happen when she was n I controlled pain. I'm sure she will share that with you.

I sure have, I knew every item in the stock room and if we had any thing unusual. The last 9 months of work It all left me little by little. Once my son and I were going to go to the mall, I started heading for Church. My son spoke up to it.

The worse was going to church in pain and not knowing a person and her husband. I had known them 10 years and worked with her at Care Net for 3 years.

I take something now for my memory, it's helped so much that my husband takes it to.

Anne, it's perfectly normal and understandable.

Remembering is dependent on several different things working:

-- attention to the thing to be remembered

-- encoding - "thinking/reacting" and putting the event into "storage"

-- recency of, and importance of, the memory in storage and memory associations to it

-- retrieval - getting the memory out of storage and "thinking/reacting" to it

Stress (including pain) and some medications, at any point in those stages of remembering, will hamper memory. And memory is fallible to begin with! A lot of what we remember about events isn't really memory but "fillers" from similar experiences.

If you are in a lot of pain, or given certain medications during the attention and encoding stages, the memory may not be stored at all.

Clap, with the list of items you had kept in memory all that time, and slowly then losing your ability to recall them, your memory was being affected at all stages.

Chronic pain (and the medications we take) will do that.

Ah, then what to do about that?

Writing and sharing at MDJ

Keep a journal.

Like all of you my memory is hit and miss. There are times when I pull up a case to read the history and ask myself what the heck. DID I WRITE THAT. I do journal and keep lots of notes to keep me on track at work. High level pain episodes do leave me zapped and memory gone.

kjv1956

I used to be known as the person that remembers everything all of the time. Now I have gaps of things that I can't remember. My husband will remind me of something and I still can't remember it. I never forgot an appointment or birthday even if they were a in another year. Now I have to put them on my phone and computer. It isn't because I am getting older, I am only 34 for pete's sake. I just think my pain tolerance has gone up so much recently that I can't think straight.