Short as I can write it summary:

24 year old formerly athletic and intelligent male with a systemic (body-wide) infection primarily manifesting as encephalitis/brain infection, which has caused parkinsonian syndrome/dementia/difficulty swallowing, and on the MRI scan, possible multiple small infarcts and mild hydrocephalus. This all explains why I'm not athletic or intelligent any more. It's difficult to go cycling 30 miles a day without losing control of my bike multiple times and/or making the infection flare up due to physical stress. Lack of intelligence is self-explanatory.

Ah yes, I also forgot to mention here (it's partially in my sig)... infection also causing lymph nodes around the lower end of my lungs to swell, making it hard for me to breathe... oooh and the most fun part, I've got a constant low-grade fever that hasn't stopped for over a year! 101.0F is the new 98.6F, baby! This causes the most God-awful fatigue, btw.

(And don't forget the hypothyroidism and Marfan's syndrome...)

There's some moderate psychiatric crap thrown in there for kicks, too.

Tertiary illness includes having-to-live-with-doting-overbearing-parents syndrome. Trust me, NeuroTalk parents, don't get insulted, my parents (and their issues) are worse than you think.

.....

The FAQ (aka more crap, since I love hearing myself [try to] talk):

* What does your SN mean?

-- I sell maracas for a living, since I'm poor. Well not really. I took an old joke from a friend, who'd told me that he was on so many medications that whilst passing through airport security, he'd sound like a travelling maraca salesman. I painfully realized this phenomenon for myself last year (being on 7 meds and just as many vitamins and supplements). Lastly, it is of note that I am, in fact, poor.


*Dementia? You seem smart.

-- My lack of intelligence is more the verbal dementia. My intellect is fine, it's just that sometimes I make subtle syntax errors or use one or two wrong words, making the sentence unreadable. Or if I'm really lucky, I completely change the meaning of the sentence and/or make it offensive to someone. You need to send me a message if I said something that sounded incoherent and/or hostile. I probably didn't mean it that way.

I also have no attention span, and this is on top of the AD/HD I've had all my life!


*Uh, so you do have some happy things in life, though, right?

-- I think or pretend to, at least. I enjoy cooking, and can still cook (when I have the energy). I enjoy composing music (and subsequently going deaf)... favorite styles being power rock and power metal, hard rock, and the rare techno here and there. If you want to go deaf, you can... just visit www.psychobiologist.net/music/

I also do some freelance writing (grammar and syntax errors notwithstanding). My current (and online) project is about neuroscience (I'm trained and have worked as a biologist), so I'm not going to post any direct links to it on here. Oh yeah, it's also only like 10% done.


* Do you like to edit posts a lot?

-- You'll find out soon enough.

[This post edited at 10:51 AM on 11 December 2007.]


* Hey dude, can you spare a dime?

-- No, but can you spare a few thousand? I wouldn't mind.


* Why do you have such a cynical sense of humor?

-- You got "cynical" and "realistic" confused.





More to come, and thanks in advance for the welcome!

Hi, MaracaSalesman! Welcome to NeuroTalk!

How's business? So, what hamlet of MI are you actually from?

MaracaSalesman,

Hello and welcome to NeuroTalk. Great to see you have come to be with us. You will find a great number of caring, supporting members here willing to help each other as they can.

Again welcome, looking forward to seeing you around.

Darlene

FAQ, continued:

* You just used the term "y'all".
-- I was born and raised in the South, get used to it.

-------------------

And I repeat, thanks y'all for the welcome!!


Anyways, AfterMyNap:

I'm not from MI... Been there a lot and know that 31 and 131 are two of the state's main lifelines... Good old 31 describes my longitude close enough, nonetheless. And where I live, at the 40'N parallel, 31 is in fact the Meridian!

...or wait, did you mean MI as in the state of mental illness? In that zone I'm blessed with Major Depression, Narcolepsy, AD/HD, and the neuropsychiatric syndromes I mentioned in my earlier post. (n.B. - Some residents have argued that Michigan and mental illness are essentially the same state.)

Also Darlene, thanks for your welcome!

----------

And uh-oh, I think I have some more complaining to do...!

Being in the realm of neuroscience academically, the clinic I sought "care" at during most of 2006 and half of 2007 automatically assumed that the disorder was imaginary, i.e., "all up in my head" (this was before the generalized infection symptoms got really bad). Interestingly, they were actually right, it WAS all up in my head! (Though literally.) Mild hydrocephalus with evidence of diffuse micro-infarcts in the SND (parkinson) area. Probably will be stuck with coordination issues and tremor the rest of my life, apparently the dementia is reversible with infection treatment and relief of increased ICP... I think I mentioned that all already, not sure...

but yeah

thanks guys!

Welcome MaracaSalesman!! Love the name!!!

My guess with the 40 degrees N Parallel and US 31 you are somewhere on the north side of Indy. (I love geography!!!)


Look forward to seeing you around the boards!

Abbie

Hi Maraca and Welcome to NT. You are funny!

Glad you stumbled upon us...

Abasaki and daisymay -- thanks for the welcomes!


Abasaki: Astute observation on getting the hint as to my location. (US-31 is known as Meridian Street from downtown Indianapolis to 25 miles outwards.)