Blame it on the Brain

This is my first “proper” blog entry for nearly 15 months, which means I’ve enjoyed a year and 3 months of relative normality (yippee) - or as one of my clients commented after my first surgery, “Tak, you’re back to abnormal”.

I’m writing this entry today, not because anything’s wrong but just to update on some results I got this afternoon. 

A couple of months ago, I had my 18-month psychological evaluation.  This was my 3^rd such assessment: I had one before my first surgery, another 6 months after and then finally this one 18 months later.  

My first few rounds of surgery had caused my IQ to drop significantly - from being in the top 98^th percentile (pretty damn clever) to the 84^th (merely “above average”). What’s more, my memory tested terribly – I was in the bottom 30^th percentile, which officially puts me in the “impaired” bracket.

12 months on, and my IQ has edged back up.  I’m now back in the top 94-95^th percentile and my memory has improved, from “impaired” to just “below average”.  This is all playing out as my surgeon had predicted.  There was an immediate drop because of all the poking around in my head, but it’s gradually improved over time as the brain heals.  So, hopefully, in a few more months I might be back to my old self fully. 

For now, I still have to write everything down otherwise I will almost certainly forget.  My visual memory is particularly bad, so I continue to forget people’s faces with alarming regularity.  The number of times I’ve introduced myself to someone, only for them to say, “yes Tak, we’ve met 10 times before already” – really makes me cringe. 

So, if you are one of those people who I’ve ran into and ignored, who’s name I’ve forgotten, or who I’ve introduced myself to without realising that we’ve already met SO many times before - I offer you my sincere apologies.  I must come off as being incredibly rude and I really don’t mean to be.  Please don’t take it personally.  Like Milli Vanilli said, “blame it on the brain” (or something like that).