Neuropsych testing's exhausting
 

:holysheep: Wow...... I forgot how bad it can be after the testing. I'm bushed. :thud::thud::thud:

It was pretty funny, the only question I remembered from my prior session (because it deeply disturbed me that I could not remember it) was: How are a fly and a tree similar? So I told them they couldn't ask me that question cuz I knew the proper answer. Told the neuropsych doc before the testing and told the person administering the tests. Um.... ok. They did and I gave the right answer and then answered it like I did the first time around. She just laughed.

:Writting:

There were so many numbers, dots, pictures, words..... I'm brain fried. Oh and how DO you do odds anyway? I mean, if you have 6 red paperclips, 4 green, and 2 yellow and you mix them up and select one, what are the odds that you'll get a green paperclip? I HATE MATH!!

Oh..... I strongly suggest not using words like : "appellation" or "antimony" if you are asked to name words beginning with A or using "Duck Billed Platypus" or "chinchilla" as an animal when asked to name lots of animals. I did and she just looked at me slightly askance.

I actually forgot what I was talking about once when talking to the neuropsych doc. Lends credence to what I've been saying (and forgetting I've been saying) about my stupid memory.

I'm gonna plop myself in front of the TV tonight and NOT think. I"m not even gonna talk to anyone tonight--just vegetate. Back to work tomorrow......where I have to think.

Oh and I despise those stupid questions that are T/F and ask you things like: If cornered, I would tell the portion of truth that would be the least harmful to me. Um how do you answer that? The truth itself contains "the portion of truth that would be the least harmful to me" so if you tell the truth it contains the portion. If you say True, then you're possibly limiting yourself to just the portion of the truth and not the whole truth? If you say False, are you not telling the truth and lying? <sigh> Maybe I overthink things. :mfr_wha:

It's kind of like lumping my parents and family into a category and asking a question. There was one question like that. It was something like My parents and family are more critical of me than they should be. It was true for my parents and false for my family. So which applies to me? Hmmm.... both. And I'm sure that I can't answer T and F. <sigh again> Separate out the parents from the family and I can answer the questions "as applied to me." Lump them together and I have a moral dilemma on how to answer the question cuz there's no right answer to it the way they phrase it. :Hum:

And what's with all the "I love (loved--if deceased) my father" and "I love (loved--if deceased) my mother" questions? I have a not so good relationship with BOTH my parents and worse with my mother. I don't know HOW I feel about my dad and know I don't love my mom. Just ducky.

And during the lovely symbol/number/letter and 1,2,3,4 test I started to get a headache and get nauseous looking at her flipping the chart fast as I answered. So I had to cover one eye and really concentrate, which helped. But ugh..... THAT didn't happen to me before. (I had an insane urge to want to draw eyeballs in the white circles on the black background. Is that NORMAL??? :rolleyes:) :Doh:

I gotta go shut down now. Will throw ball with dog just to help STOP the questions in my head. :Talkative:

:thud:

Ummm, fly paper? :Wheel:

Phew, Gazelle . . . I'm exhausted just trying to follow your post. That sounds grueling!!!

Tell me, how are a fly and tree similar? :confused: Living organisms or something like that? :wink:

I didn't like my mom or dad either, but I loved them. Sounds contradictory, I suppose . . . but they did the best THEY could.

Glad it's over and you will be hopefully getting valid results this time.

Good luck!

Cherie

I know!!! They can tolerate heat and humidity unlike most MS'ers! ;)

Could it be because you have a cold?

Hope you feel better soon.

Sounds like the MMPI! I had a real problem with that test. There were several questions on there that I had a problem answering because of the phrasing. Oh well, glad I have never had to do any neuro-psych testing and glad that yours is over.

:hug:

tree leaves and fly wings look similar. I remember that from my botany class.

Okay, first: how are a tree and fly similar? sheesh, I feel stupid now!

Cheryl - I also have a problem with the MMPI. I had to take it when I was a teenager - and the shrink said they could not validate my results because I had LIED! Huh?

Well, the question was something about "swearing" - I said I never swear.... and the doctor told me I had just said fuc% a million times to him. I said, "That's not swearing, that's cursing!!!" Sigh. Apparently, that is called swearing....but I grew up and it was called cursing. Swearing, to me, meant making statements like, "I swear....yadda yadda yadda" - which I never did.

The MMPI is one of those "biased" tests that relies on language based on a norm that hasn't been updated in eons.

Okay, not back to the fly and tree?

~Keri

I am so impressed that you remembered so much of the test to be able to tell us about it!

I think you're smarter than you think you are! ;)


C'mon, tell us the answer to the fly/tree question!!! :rolleyes:

Read my post Twink! I answered the question!

Sheesh...:p

Actually, Cherie wins the prize for the answer. There may be other similarities, but only one "right" answer. For instance, "they both can be irritating" (buzzing around and giving you hay fever/rashes [poison oak and sumac]) or "they both drop things all over" (fly poop and tree leaves) or my original answer, "they both can go up in the air."

No, FG, it's not because I might be getting a cold. I don't feel crappy or anything, just have a cough and had some sinus pressure so may be working up to my (semi?) annual case of bronchitis and sinus infection. It's not there yet to the point where it's affecting me.

I think that the eye thing has more to do with the rapid flipping of the cards. It's similar to the problem I had when sitting in the passenger seat when in Wales--the motion of the landscape rapidly passing by in the rearview mirror made me a bit nauseous. Plus, we'd been at it all morning and most of the afternoon when she gave me that test. The MMPI-2 was the last thing she gave me.

Keri, I understand your problem with "lying." :) Too bad when we tell the truth we can be told we're lying. Ugh... I really hate the wording of the questions on the MMPI. Some of it's fine and easy to answer right away, but the other things....maybe I parse words too much. Didn't skip any of them and maybe should have.

Cherie, I used to love my mother. She's just pulled some amazingly cruel things on me and I can't justify keeping a relationship with her. At first when she started doing it, I loved her but didn't like her. Now I don't care one way or the other. She's got problems--real problems. I could forgive her for the things she did when I was a child because she did do the best she was able, but I do not forgive her for the things she did when I was an adult. You have to draw a line somewhere. Mine was at age 36. As for my father, how do you feel about a man who gets remarried when you're 13, tells you two weeks after it, and when you ask why you and your younger brother weren't invited he responds, "We only had close family there." I'm his DAUGHTER. That was his SON. How much closer family can you get?????? :confused::confused::confused::confused: That's been the hallmark of my relationship with my father since he and my mom split.

I, too, hope that I get valid results this time. His office was very professionally run, so that's a nice start. But I'll reserve my judgment until I see the resulting report. (and it has nothing to do with how well I did either) ;)


Laura, love the fly paper remark. :D

Twink, I've never professed to being smart. LOL I let people form their own opinions of that. I'm really worried more about memory issues.

Ugh..... who remembers things like the speed of light or the world population. Seriously! I used to know "ballpark" the speed of light but who uses that generally in their daily lives? I can give you the number of feet in a mile but not the speed of light. And the world population is in the billions but how many? Yet they ask these questions.

I honestly would have answered "Fly paper". It was the first thing that came to mind.

If I win a cookie, I hope it's low fat!!

That's exciting. :) I don't get these kinds of questions very often . . . guess helping my kids with science all the time has somehow kept me in the loop or something. :confused:

I get that too, Gazelle. Lot's of times when I stop, everything else doesn't. Apparently that is the definition of vertigo.

My mom was too crazy to intend any harm, and my dad died very young . . . so maybe that was a blessing. :cool:

I've done quite a few of these tests, just out of curiousity mostly. I was in HR for years and was interested in the personality assessments especially. I actually learned a lot from that testing, both about myself and others that did them! They feel kinda' creepy when you do them though as there never seems to be a "right" answer . . .

I would fail terribly at those questions, but I think if a person did well they might actually be more worried about THEM, then they do the "normal" people. ;) I think they are testing on how you react to the stress of stupid questions more then whether you know the answer. :p

Cherie

That's it? :confused:

FG, I just thought you were venturing an educated guess, being a gardenologist and all.

Ah, heck! I thought it was supposed to be a riddle or something.

So I gather a fly and a leaf have veins that make them similar? Well, then, you oughta take a look at the tops of my hands! Egad! :eek:

Now wait a gosh derned minute! I just read Gazelle's post that's after yours Cheryl!

I'm so confewzed. Quitcher messin wit my haid!

Good thing I didn't have to take that same test, I wouldn't have made it past the fly/tree question. :confused:

When I was going through the process of trying to get diagnosed, my neuro suggested "we could do a neuropsych exam" or something like that.

Well, I didn't know what he meant. I was overwhelmed, he didn't explain what it was, and what it was for, and I thought it was another one of those "it's all in your head and we're gonna prove it" things.

So in his office notes, he wrote that he had recommended a neuropsych exam but I was "hesitant". It makes me sound non-compliant.

I wonder if I should have, or if it would have made any difference, other than stress me out?

She took the test, so she knows the answer. I took botany and we compared fly wings with tree leaves. That's my answer and I am sticking to it...but I will not argue with her. She's the expect on the neuro-psych answers, I am not. :p;)

B2Y, the one thing the neuro at Hopkins told me in January was that getting it done gives a good baseline for cognitive functioning. So the one I had 5 years ago would be a baseline (if, in fact, it is valid) and this one would show slippage (if any).

I don't know if "hesitant" makes you sound non-compliant. I don't think that it would HELP you get diagnosed and it's expensive testing. Heck, you could be "hesitant" to get spinal surgery and that's probably a prudent response to that. So don't worry about the effect of a "hesitant" in your records for a test that's not essential to a diagnostic path. ;)

The testing is rather interesting. It's just exhausting. And they do stop if you get frustrated or too stressed. So if you think you would want to do it, don't be afraid of it. It's a lot but it's useful if you have cognitive problems.

A good neuropsych should be able to give you suggestions on how to compensate for cognitive issues you might have. That in itself is worthwhile because it can help you make your life LESS stressful than it is right now if the cog problems are causing you stress.

But that's NOT why I know the answer. I bugged a neuropsychologist for a while and begged to know how they were similar--because I was going nuts not knowing how they were similar. Nothing made sense to me. And it was driving me crazy. The neuropsych finally took pity on me and gave me the answer. I was incredibly grateful.


I have this strange capacity for remembering odd details, meaningless trivia, strange facts. For example, water weighs 8.33 pounds per gallon. I don't know if there's a difference in the weight of a gallon of salt water. It would be fun to know that. In school, I was the one bound to remember the weird rules about things. I could recite all the strange factual scenario details from a given hypothetical problem. So it bugs me when I can't remember the speed of light (I know it now) or who wrote a certain piece of literature. I also know what a certain scientist is famous for and what that scientist died of (but the latter part wasn't part of the test--just something I threw in as a bonus).

I need a life. :rolleyes:

ROFLMAO @ the details/memory thing! I have the same problem, only since MS, I forget WHY I know it and where I put it in my head until AFTER I need the trivial fact!

I do know the weight of salt water depends on how much salt is in the gallon of water, and a cubic foot of fresh water weighs 62.2 lbs and that there are about 7.5 gallons of water in a cubic foot! ( it pays to know your hydraulics when in whitewater!)...

(Marie Curie and radiation and aplastic anemia as a result of radiation poisoning?)

If you want the exact answer, you need to know the ratio of salt to water. According to what I researched, salt water weighs ~64 lbs/cu. ft., and fresh water comes in at about 62.2 lbs/cu. ft. There are 7.4805 gallons in a cubic foot. So a gallon of salt water weighs 8.556 lbs.

Aviation fuel weighs 6 pounds/gallon.

Oh VERY good. VERY, very, VERY good! :winner_first_h4h:

Either that or you've watched the movie Enchanted WAY too often!

:Writting:


So let me draw some conclusions here:

Most people do not know the ratio of salt to water in their salt water.
Salt water weighs more per gallon than does fresh water.
Aviation fuel weighs less per gallon than both salt and fresh water.
Aviation is more inflammable than both water and salt water.

Very good!

http://sl.glitter-graphics.net/pub/7...vyvk1sj9fl.gif

LMAO...never saw the movie "Enchanted"

It just popped in when you said scientist and death.

Even scarier is that I remembered WHY inflammable does not mean NOT flammable...:p

I wonder why none of that ever comes out when we need it in the neuropsych eval!

My boo-boo question was in free association when the dork said Katherine the Great. I said she was a queen- dork asks of what...I couldn't remember and of course...move right on to next words...all of a sudden I yell out RUSSIA...three words later...LMAO! Then I forgot the words that were just asked...and dork wouldn't repeat them OR accept Russia for Katherine the Great...grrrr.

I blew Faust. WHF remembers WHO wrote Faust? I never even read it. I"ve heard it a couple of times but..... ok, you have to be into literature to remember THAT sort of thing. Give me Chaucer or who wrote Tom Jones or Persuasion. Seriously. I've read those. But Faust?

Catherine the Great. She was quite the gymnast if I recall correctly. And she had a huge gym set up with a lot of mirrors in it.

I vaguely mumbled something about discovering radiation and then said, "no, that's not quite right..... maybe it was X-rays.....no, that was Roentgen.....but she died from whatever it was she discovered.....it caused her death.....it was in the radiation field....... Nope. Don't know." So I wonder what my answer is going to look like on that one.

Oh you HAVE to see Enchanted. It's hysterical. It's a spoof of all the blooming Disney movies. Just don't ever take me to movies like that. I have a rather hearty belly laugh and people know when I'm at a funny movie (or one that's not funny but I can see where it's going and it's going to have a funny moment). :D

Most people get inflammable and flammable confused and think they mean different things.


They ask so many random things that I think your mind just goes into blank mode.

The only number that popped into my head when asked about light was 5280. Great. I had ONE part of the equation. Now if I could only have remembered the multiplier for it. :rolleyes: Query: do you get PARTIAL credit for remembering that it's in miles? I knew it was m/sec. didn't throw in the "sec." part of it.

Good explanation for the speed of light:
http://www.why-is-the-sky-blue.tv/speed-of-light.htm

I figured the salt water would weigh more b/c it is denser.

Years ago (before industry diluted it) you could float in the Great Salt Lake. There were picture postcards of people just sitting and reading the newspaper w/o a flotation device.

I suppose you could drown in the GSL, but there is absolutely no way to sink in it!


My brain is a sieve. Full of holes. *sigh If I hear something important, it leaks right through. Useless info somehow sticks.

Pffft! That's just not even fair! :mad:

I guess I'd better go rent Enchanted.

Oh Dear.

I kept thinking "Enchanted...Enchanted...now why do I know that movie??":confused:

Isn't that the movie AMN's niece was in??? She played...?????

Quick, before she gets here! Someone remember!!!!!!:eek:

Wasn't she the voice of the animals?

Twink, you need a bun with that thar reptile you're holding. Every time I see your avatar I think, "There's no blood there. She's eating it but there's no blood...." Come on... there's photoshop you know! :D

Are you freaking kidding me that they asked you questions about the speed of light and Faust? I do NOT remember that being a part of my neurospych testing. What the heck does that have to do with the price of tea in China? How would someone who just didn't have that level of education do with that?

I have long ago forgotten just about everything like that, so I guess I'm sunk. I'm really afraid to have my testing repeated because I feel so stupid (pronunciation: stoooopid) anymore.

I think I would have failed this test. :Speechless::Hum::Scratch-Head::Crazy 2:

As I mentioned earlier, I don't think they care about whether we get the right answers . . . I'm guessing they are really looking to see how the stress of not knowing affects us; tires us out? frustrates us? angers us?, etc.

Depending on how we respond, that's where they pick up on "depressed", "grieving", etc.

Cherie

Ok then I would definitely be diagnosed as 'whacko'. LOL!

Oh me too, Laura. There's no doubt in my mind that that's how they have me classified. :D

Well I'd have just laughed at them, or told them where to go . . . I'm sure they have a nice little classification for those reactions too. :D

Cherie

wait...I answered the fly and tree question with an answer like....
hmmm they both live outdoors usually.... is that too easy of an answer..??? hahahaaa

who knows...I was good at the puzzle type things..but nothing memory wise....tell me a story..and I couldnt get it right at all to tell back to ya....

the testing was fun when I did it in 2006...but yes tiring without knowing it was till later that day...

hugsss and love,sarah

A bun?

It's not proper etiquette to eat buns with reptile. Reptiles HAVE no buns!

hehehe :rolleyes: