Short Term Memory

Short term memory keeps track of nominally seven plus or minus two items.  Last year (2014) I had radiation therapy and was told by the doctor that it would take about four months to heal what ever would heal after the damage to the brain. I remember well August through November where I recognized a reduced ability to hold and remember multiple items.  One odd behavior is that I would scrub the floor squares in a regular pattern instead of my normal randomly chase spots.  Last week, I scrubbed the floor and noticed I was following the squares again.

To fight that problem, instead of waiting patiently, I wrote "hobby" software of a card game using a Neural Net to manage the AI.  Interesting, I stopped working on it in November of last year which aligned with feeling like my short term memory was back.  I restarted the software fun shortly after the radiation treatment of the second cancer.  Hopefully it will work as well this time.

It's four o'clock in the morning.  I slept from 10 am to about 2 am. I then laid in bed multiplying numbers in my brain. After two hours I got up and am sitting here.

Something odd is going on in this post.  My spelling is very good this morning.  I have not had a single spelling error so far in this post that wasn't a typo that was quickly fixed.  Weird. Weird. Wierd!!!  And Melody is not awake to help me.  It seems ok to me :-)

It's really too early for this, but it's what I do.  Here's me reading the Book of Mormon aloud at 4:44 am :-)

Today I read aloud page 335 of 531 of the Book of Mormon.  Captain Moroni sent Teancum to stop the enemy army led by Morianton from taking occupation of the land northward which would be a danger to the Nephites. Those who survived the battle made a covenant to keep the peace.

How has terminal cancer change my world view?

In the late 1800's and early 1900's when the "Robber Barrons" reigned in the United States, the data shows a peak in income disparity towards the wealthy. The breakdown in income for the top 10%, middle 40% and bottom 50% was 45%, 50% and 5%.  In 1950 the share was 30%, 60% and 10%.  In 2010 the data is the same as in the 1890's.  The current trend is towards wealth continuing to move towards the top 10%.  This data comes from the book Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Recently in Baltimore, an African-American died while in the custody of six police officers.

I've recently expressed opinions and made judgments about these two topics. In the past, I didn't talk very much about political or social topics.  Am I going crazy? :-) Is it brain damage from the cancer? :-)  Am I losing my mind? :-)

Here's some data about many of the books I've read in the last few years.  No real change there. I read the same kinds of books.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Thomas Piketty
Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape..
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, 
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but.. Nate Silver
The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War,.. 
Salt.  Mark Kurlansky
Thinking Statistically.  Uri Bram
Sync: How Order Emerges from Chaos In the Universe, Nature,..  Steven H. Strogatz
Nine Algorithms That Changed the Future: The Ingenious Ideas.. John MacCormick
The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our.. Bryan Sykes
The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller.. Marc Levinson
Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed.. Bill O'Reilly
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives Leonard Mlodinow
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders.. David W. Anthony
Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court. Jeff Shesol

I read more news on the internet!  That must be it.  Am I better informed or more confused? Again, not related to the cancer except I have more time to waste on the internet if I choose to.

What about changes to how my brain is working now.  The second cancer, the radiation surgery, the changed chemotherapy, and back to the steroids have had a very noticeable change to my recall of words and my strength level and fatigue and sleep.

Two typical examples of things I can't remember or take minutes instead of seconds to recover. I played a board game Thursday night.  On Friday, when Melody asked what I played it took me a while to come up with "Caylus".  I have soda in my refrigerator (the only non-caffeinated soda (throw back Mountain Dew was therefore excluded from the survey) at Wall Mart with sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup) and it took me awhile to come up with "Sierra Mist".  Sometimes the word never comes. I tend to lose the names of things and people.   Another example of what I struggle with happened while writing this paragraph, I spelled "sugar", "caffeinated", "syrup", and "sierra" wrong and had to figure them out.  This wasn't from typing it wrong. I don't count those.

However, when having a conversation about a variety of topics, I don't feel like I have as much trouble expressing ideas, so long as I don't refer to some names or things. I seem to do well enough with words that represent concepts or ideas. I also am able to play board games and write hobby software with what feels like the same skill I had before.

So, in the end I've give you data and no conclusion.  Sounds just like me!

Warning!!! Melody is not here to edit this and fix my grammar and spelling. Thanks Melody for all you do.

Today I read aloud page 325 of 531 of the Book of Mormon.  Captain Moroni defeats Amalickiah and they have four years of peace in the land.  I like the verse where it talks about the many who died "firmly believing that their souls were redeemed by the Lord Jesus Christ; thus they went out of the world rejoicing".