my diseased brain

According to the doctor, I'm not brainless. Not yet, anyway. The neuropsychological testing, that eight hours of torture so casually referred to as a mental status exam, turned up no evidence of encroaching dementia or a sinister, looming pre-alzheimer's state.

The neurologist is a raving right winger who used the immense disparity of our political views as an assessment tool in our first meeting. He started by saying "it all looks pretty good," then said "here, I'll read you this from the status exam."

The subject is functioning in the __________ to _________ range of intellectual abilities and it appears that her distress about reduced mental functioning is groundless, though the fact that she is a far left wing liberal is of grave concern.

That was pretty cute. We both laughed. Then he said that the MRI "looks good, with mild white matter disease." What the fuck? "Looks good" does not, in my book, go together with anything ending in "disease."

Allegedly, it's pretty common and usually causes no problems, but having seen my father's brain at 85, speckled with white patches and marked by frontal lobe shrinkage, it's disturbing.

My white stuff is in the center of the brain. Can't remember enough about brain functioning (see? that's what I mean, can't remember much of anything) to remember what that controls, but I wonder if it isn't language and inhibitions and that sort of thing. I'm seized with an urge to shout "oh FUCK it! those stupid @#$!@#%#% bastards!!" on a fairly regular basis these days. But I do read a lot of political news, which may be a mitigating factor.

So there it is. I don't function as well as I once did (*sniff*), but that's typical as we age. Or so he says. I have white stuff in my brain from tiny exploding capillaries and whether I have enough gray stuff to outlast the white, I guess we'll find out in 25-30 years. My father was smart enough that he had to lose a big chunk of brain before it was clear something was wrong. I am, alas, not as smart as my brilliant daddy.

So lots of cardio for me ~ one of the few things that seems to act as a preventive for dementia ~ and good vitamins. I think I'll add a little niacin and some of the brain nutrients. Puzzles like sudoku are supposed to help but I despise puzzles.

Time marches on and though I'm happy being fif-fif-fif-fifty, I don't like much about this brain crap and I hate the sound of "white matter disease." Coupled with the occasional burst of pain I feel running on the elliptical, I'm thinking today it kind of sucks to be old.