20 November 2012 Symptoms

Inward appearances and conditions.

20 November 2012

Vision seems to be deteriorating somewhat.  The absence of pattern recognition seems to be coming back more strongly than it was earlier in the year.  Faces may be unrecognized; familiar locations seem strange, Looking for “things”, readily identifiable, can be a real challenge.  At times the most familiar items just don’t appear, even if looking right at them.  Sometimes it just takes longer and the eyes will focus in, but the focus process is quite slow.  This limits my ability somewhat in reading and in reading (especially) new music.  Hope the old grey lump is up to some memorization by next time for performance.

Whether focus or peripheral vision, I find myself bumping into cabinet doors or such on occasion.  No nasty impacts, but still major frustrating at times.  Another way of saying it is that sometimes the big picture just doesn’t come into view.  Football on tv is ok but fine points of the action are not there.  Likewise sometimes just takes work to find the QB before the play starts, and getting  good focus in place before the play starts

The immediate meds which have stabilized my balance issues (steroids) leave me a little loopy nonetheless.  I run out of gas during the course of the day, but not from over-exertion by any mean

I walk in open space pretty well, but crowded or tight spaces can be off-putting.  I’m not entering any hop-scotch contests at the moment either. 

My pick-up of new concepts (using the new espresso-maker, e.g.) is a lot more difficult.  Even short bits of reading comprehension are fairly ineffective also.  Hoping that as the ‘roids move on this will improve also.

On the plus side, my keyboard skills seem to be improving a bit, mainly by remembering where to place my fingers down on the start positions.  There is still a lot of muscle memoryin the finger positions, so long as I’m starting from the right places. One small frustration moving away, if only a bit.

We are hopeful that the major med I’m now on (Avastin) will act to enhance the balance things also.  We really want to get off the steroids just to keep some more mental focus.  Also the steroids do lead to large muscle degeneration, which I don’t need any more off.  The whole combo platter has me somewhat dried out also, and the singing voice is losing range and resonance partly as a consequence.   All of which is just fine if the Avastin knocks out Mr. Nasty as hoped.