Kindle:
Paperback:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
This is my third and final secret about to be revealed. My neurological disability is Wernicke-Korsakov Encephalopathy, but I'm one of the rare cases that is NOT related to alcohol. This is the first patient-side book (as opposed to medical books and books aimed at the medical profession) that I've discovered so it'll be interesting to see which of the authors symptoms are the same as mine and which are related only to their alcohol consumption.
I know you may not believe me 'cos most people don't when I tell them, but I've never been drunk in my entire life... a bit tipsy a couple of times, yes, but never drunk - I've never seen the appeal of it and the thought of a hangover the next day is really not my idea of fun.
Aaaanyway, lets get going with the reading and reviewing shall we?
Just my luck that my Kindle is throwing a strop at me this morning! lol Good job I've got the app on my computer as well, really!
Oh dear, the author can't spell gait lol I'm with him so far though 'cos it was the same for me when I first woke up on the Neurology ward. I don't remember anything about it, just waking up on a Neurology ward after being in ICU and then HDU for the best part of (I think) 2 (or was it 3?) weeks.
Oooh! I still get the eye twitching in my left eye but I thought it was a vision thing rather than a WKE thing! I don't need to mention it to the optician after all then!
That first section was one of the big reasons that I've never been drunk... I just haven't fancied the chance of losing a job and/or career that I loved and being forced into a drink problem support group like Alcoholics Anonymous because of it... maybe things are different in America (where this book has been based so far) but the less trouble I can cause and be caused the better. I've never been a trouble-maker so the idea of getting bladdered then sleeping through an important meeting or being too drunk to wake up until after lunch has never been my idea of fun.
Yup, I had multiple episodes like that early on, which were diagnosed as Psychotic Depression before I was blue-lighted to hospital on Christmas Day, unconscious, and I've been taking prescribed APs ever since that keep me pretty sane usually.
Yup, I can totally relate to the random puking, double vision and especially the not eating... before I was rushed to hospital, I couldn't even keep tap water, let alone anything else, in my stomach so everyone thought it was an eating disorder rather than something physical and did for 3.5 years before I was rushed into hospital!
Yup, apparently I frequently went to "play with trains" in the early days... everyone put that down to my psychotic depression and me being suicidal too, but it was the early warning signs of my WKE!
Yup, this was definitely me around the time of my emergency hospital admission and soon after I regained consciousness!
Yup, the blue curtains were a biiig thing for me in the early days on the Neurology ward... it's all starting to come back to me now!
Yup, my late hubby said that they didn't think I'd make it at one point either... I think he said that I'd got to hospital just in time too.
He's spelled gait right this time but he's written till instead of still but this must be a painful book for him to write so I'm not gonna knock off a star for the odd spelling mistake - heck knows I make enough of them too!
Yup, clips and snippets with me too... maybe I've got more in common with the author than I initially thought, maybe our lives aren't that different after all, just because we got struck by the WKE for different reasons?
Yup, I think (but not 100% sure) the unresponsive thing mentioned with me for the first few weeks after I got rushed in!
This should be interesting... apparently only alcoholics get WKE "unless you happened to be starving to death, and then only maybe." I'm the maybe.
Yup, BTDT myself with the stopping taking the B1 (for me the answer was "I don't know!" rather than "nothing") - never ever again though. People laugh or think I'm lying when I explain why I *have* to take the multivitamin as well as the vitamin B complex every morning (as well as my other 3 pills that I take each morning) but this has explained it better than I ever could. If you know me and you want to be more supportive about my B1 extremes, read page 70 onwards to get a very tiny glimpse into the essentialness of those two small pills that I take, without fail, as soon as I come downstairs every morning. They are *the* most important pills that I take out of all of them combined and they are available over the counter.
Yup, the first two sentences of section 3 were me to a tee... I left the ward knowing that I was going home after the best part of 3 months and couldn't wait to restart my life with full health. By the time I stepped out of the lift I was like "who are we visiting?" and by the time we got to the car park it was "ooh! Where are we going?" Within about 1,000 steps and 10 minutes of leaving the ward, my mind was a total blank!
Ooooh! The Nystagmus thing (your eyes bouncing around) is a WKE thing as opposed to an optician thing too then! That's two things crossed off the list of things to talk to them about... I wonder if the possibility of getting a detatched retina is a WKE thing too?
My sense of smell is kinda OK... I can usually still smell strong smells like garlic, usually onions, occasionally curry, but subtle, flowery smells etc are history for me but never realised that was connected to my WKE too until I read it!
Oooh! Maybe my toe pain is 'cos of the WKE instead of my ingrowing toenail that only hurts when I think of it, like now? I'm seriously starting to wonder if more of my minor medical complaints are due to my WKE instead of the general aches and pains that everyone gets from time to time... is my WKE still controlling my life even after more than two decades since leaving the ward for the last time as a long-term in-patient??
Oooooh! My huuuuge memory issues are because of the Korsakov bit of my diagnosis, not just me going loopy in my middle age! It's why my GP referred me back to the same neuro who diagnosed and treated me in hospital as opposed to any other neuro at the hospital and it's why I skipped the waiting list too!
Yes!! The author has described why I write and how I cope with the memory issues better than I ever could! On the rare occasion that I mention to someone that I write their eyebrows immediately raise as if to say "she's either lying about the writing or her memory issues and now I don't believe either of them or even anything else she's said so far!" Confabulation is an issue for people with WKE, but that's different to the lying that non-WKE people do! It's embellishment rather than lying and I immediately correct myself too!
This book has been such a refreshing change and I feel understood at last!
No comments:
Post a Comment