Experiences and methods for observing, testing and tracking cognitive fatigueability and PEM - discussion thread

Kitty said:
Anything that needs rhythm (walking, playing music), balance (walking, moving from standing to sitting), spatial relationships (going through a doorway), and grip force calculation (picking up a plate) will show that I'm off.

Also having to make up nouns and adjectives because the real ones have disappeared behind the brick wall. Eg, reducing people to helpless giggles by describing the window in a tin whistle as the music hole.

I don't know whether facial expressions would work for me, as mine are very contrived due to autism. I had to learn to do them as deliberately as the way children learn to pronounce a sentence in another language.

Skin tone probably would, though, it's how colleagues at work used to know. It might only be because I have the fairest skin type humans are issued with and my colouring changes a lot during conversation. When I'm in PEM it apparently doesn't, it just looks grey.
Click to expand...

Time just passes faster for me when exhausted. Hence I have a screwed sense of time without directly checking the time, because ...I assume... everything slows down and of course my brain is also slowed along with my ability to do tasks, or is better if it is a good day. It is far more than feeling slow, if I enter into something where I won't be checking the time constantly I'm experienced enough to take a guess at how long vs the optimum good day it might take - it just genuinely does not seem that long at all, say if something normally takes 20mins but on that day it takes 45 it will have felt to me like 20mins. Except for the fact I've checked the time.

I'm not zoning out or anything. And have generally be OK when I need to be on time, when I am allowed sufficient control of planning and doing and it was doable and have clocks by be constantly as I can. But I couldn't easily tell you how long something has just been.

And for example if I forgot to set an alarm on the oven and suddenly remembered I could guess it has been 5 minutes and it might have been 20 or vice versa. I absolutely can only even guestimate based on using my memory to see if I can find any frames of reference (like if a TV programme was playing and I know the point that was playing when I started it and can rewind to see time difference).

This phenomena is why I find clock genes/proteins etc so interesting as an idea to be thinking about for ME
 
writing a short text. one which you wouldn't habitually do a gazillion times and be able to 'mimic' the norm for, but with enough you'd have to have that mental power to stand back and summarise the overall message and tone you want to convey. But of course it relates to direct complex questions being impossible too. And for me we are talking about me only being able to describe it being 'good' ie normal and 'easy' (so simple vs normal, like it is natural) when it is a rare good moment vs most of the time I'm having to use a completely different 'cheat' system. It is like being a different person when it comes back.

I can only do short, neat, direct, tone when I'm having a good day. And in fact when I write eg on here suddenly the neat x lines that just 'got' what I wanted across then it tells me I'm having a good day, and maybe health-wise where things are at vs exertions in a more medium-term sense. The cheat there is that there are also some easy subjects that are more likely muscle memory if they apply to areas I've obviously drawn on previous work experience etc for / are 'home turf'. I can 'feel' they are a different level of demand for me, more like going into the automatic processing of sudoku.

Things just get worse if the brain isn't working that way and I try and edit, it just doesn't work like that because all trying to edit does is the circle where you are tiring something already more easily fatiguable and the task is bigger because you are already in circumnavigate for words to describe thoughts so just don't have that 'summarise' function available at all anyway. But at least it is easier than being stuck on a small phone screen with all the other issues associated with that.

I certainly wouldn't want to put anyone through a daily text message task because it would wreck all of my confidence.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom