i r getting stupider

You people know I consider myself, by and large, an intelligent person. No one's going to hand me a Nobel Prize in anything anytime soon or ask to study my giant brain after I die, but I think I'm well above average. I always got good grades without doing much in the way of actual work. I've always been able to learn new things fairly quickly when taught and I've always been able to figure things out on my own pretty well when not taught. I can construct a logical argument. I can come up with new ideas. My point being that, really, I am not a drooling moron.

Except lately.

A couple months ago I had an appointment with Marcy. I see her every four or five weeks these days, usually on a late Tuesday afternoon. There's a regular pattern to my visits. But a couple months ago, I just completely and totally forgot I was supposed to be there. I had no inkling until I got a voicemail from her asking if everything was alright, since I hadn't shown. I emailed her back profuse apologies and she was all, "oh, don't worry about it, I was just concerned that something had happened because you NEVER are even five minutes late for an appointment." I sorta attributed it, jokingly but not, to what I've heard from other women: that the perimenopause turns your brain to mush and your memory to shit.

So, yeah, totally forgetting an appointment is not good, but I suppose it isn't totally indicative of an incipient brain lesion. The next two episodes of gross stupidity? Not so sure. And they are particularly concerning because they both occurred at work. Not only do I consider myself intelligent, I sorta pride myself on being competent at my job. These lapses into idiocy in a professional setting are, shall we say, worrisome.

A couple weeks ago, on a Monday afternoon, it was very slow and I had no one on my schedule till the last appointment of the day. Which, y'know, SIGH. But anyway, 3:30, 3:35pm comes along and I have no patient and I think to myself, well, they are half an hour late, they are not going to show, and I cannot sit around here being bored one minute longer. So I cancel them in the computer, put my coat on, say goodbye to Receptionist Without Colorful Nickname, and leave. The time I punch out is 3:42 pm. The next morning my boss says to me, "Your patient came yesterday!" "What time?" I ask. Oh, 3:40-3:45ish. Oh, well, I think/say. And then it hits me. They were supposed to be here at 3:30, not 3pm. The last appointment on a Monday is at 3:30. So basically they were a little over ten minutes late and I was gone. Oops. Luckily, Receptionist Without Colorful Nickname covered for me and invented an excuse why I wasn't there. But, yeah. Another complete and total brain lapse.

It gets worse.

So this morning I had a teenaged patient who because of HIPAA laws I shall refer to as Roger. When we were almost all done testing, I was attempting to wake him up by calling his name. "Roger! Roger!" He arouses and says (to the crazy lady calling him repeatedly by a different name), "My name's Rob." "Wait," I say. "Is your name Roger and they call you Rob?" "No, my name's Rob." What the hell? I ask myself. When he gets up from the stretcher and the lights are turned back up in the room, I pick up his registration sheet and ask him his date of birth. It matches up. (I had already, when they first came in, verified the address, phone number, insurance, etc, with his mom.) I walk him out to the waiting room and say to his mom, "We have him down as Roger, but his name is Robert?" Yes, that's his name. Very strange, we concur, especially since he was recently registered in the ED. I tell mom I will fix the mistake in the computer. They leave. I walk back into my office, pick up the registration sheet I'd just looked at, and it says his name is...Robert. OMFG. If that is not a sign of a brain tumor or big stroke, I do not know what is. I swear to god, two minutes earlier that paper had said "Roger" on it.

Now, I could attribute this all, like I said, to the perimenopause, 'cause, like I said, rumor has it it turns your brain to mush. Or I could attribute it to my being all stressed out, but seriously? While I am extremely stressed out, I have been stressed out for the better part of the last seven years and this stupidity is of recent origin. Or I could attribute it to depression, because I think that makes you not-so-bright as well, but again, see above. How is that new?

Then I remembered that Seinfeld episode. The one where George becomes brilliant from his enforced celibacy while, meanwhile, Elaine gets stupid from hers. Oooohhhh. Maybe they were on to something. (There is no event in life that cannot be correlated with a Seinfeld episode. Trust.)

In other news? Jhoulis is the new Ubaldo. And Felix Hernandez is the new James Shields. Look it up.

xoxo