[GarnetFloride]

I was in a car crash and spent a month in the hospital where they gave me heavy-duty pain killers. I could tell I was having cognitive issues because I couldn't remember words that I knew I used before, but I wasn't curious about it.

After a while they halved the prescription and after a few hours I could feel my words returning. It was terrifying to feel my IQ rise substantially. Before I left eh hospital they gave me various cognitive and mental tests and it was reassuring to be told that I was in the 96 percentile of my peer group (college educated, engineers)

We deal with a parent with dementia and another with a stroke. The difficult part with all of these are not really seeing the decline from the inside, sometimes there are the acknowledgment of hints of decline but mostly you don't want to think about it and compensate as best as you can.

[nottorp]

Heavy duty pain killers tend to do that but it's temporary.

I remember having a particularly nasty dentist visit after which I kept myself stuffed with a painkiller i hadn't head of, on her instructions. Then going to the corner store and forgetting why I went there.

Permanent cognitive decline is another, much sadder, topic.