A dementia friend of mine (I guess I must make a similar distinction as in ‘Facebook friend’) had an MRI scan recently and the shrinkage on her hippocampus and other parts is no longer there. She’s naturally jubilant, but also feels fraudulent at now being on dementia sites and being a spokesperson for fellow sufferers.
This remarkable woman who seems to have defied scientific doctrine (and who will now most likely be a test-case for neurologists) devised her own thought exercises and attributes that and ballroom dancing to work around the effects of her particular dementia. It seems to have done the trick.
Common advice for sufferers is to do crosswords and sudokus but I’m not very keen on those, so I’ve been reading and reading and playing TTRPGs when I can. Yesterday I decided I didn’t know enough about Bertrand Russell and Normsky (aka Noam Chomsky) so I read 100 pages on Chomsky for Beginners. My brain started to overheat cartoon-like, with steam coming out of my ears, my temples bulging and crazy weird headaches, which a lot of dementia sufferers talk about. I almost fell asleep several times as my brain tried to put a stop to the madness, by shutting the body down.
Still, I learned something about Universal Grammar and his other theories.
But Normsky is unbelievably dull to listen to. Normally I'd just watch some Youtube clips, but he's dull, dull, dull. Bertrand Russell (1873-1970) on the other hand was a great speaker. He knew everybody and you could listen to him for hours. For example he knew Mr Gladstone, Tennyson, Asquith (who caught him skinny dipping) and Einstein. His grandfather - who he remembered - was born in the 18th century. Stuff like this I find amazing: 3 centuries connected by 2 people. Hearing him speak is wonderful.
One of my favourite quotes of his is so pertinent now:
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."
So I took in all this stuff, and it was great. The trouble is even though I went to bed at 10 my mind was fizzing like a pint of snakebite, and I didn't get to sleep until 1am.
Bloody Normsky (Russell is forgiven).
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