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What Happened to Lee

(wired.com)
1298 points jgrahamc | 1 comments | 15 Apr 20 14:31 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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kick ◴[15 Apr 20 15:20 UTC] No.22878763[source]▶
This is horrifying.

Conversations soon became impossible. Lee started chattering in repetitive, unceasing loops. He would tell Kristin: “We met at Cloudflare. We got engaged in Rome. We got married in Maui, Hawaii.” He repeated it hundreds of times a day. Then the loops got shorter, more cryptic. He spoke fewer sentences, instead muttering sequences of numbers or letters.

At the same time, given the flashes of lucidity pointed out in this article, you have to wonder if others talking about his condition so much might make him feel like a walking corpse when those hit.

replies(2): >>22878987 #>>22885438 #
1. thephyber ◴[16 Apr 20 02:23 UTC] No.22885438[source]▶
His old college roommate met up with Lee when the "looping thoughts" symptoms first started to present and the roommate (who had been overseas for 10 years before that) commented that he almost called 9/11 because he thought Lee was having some sort of a stroke. Lee's short term memory seemed to wipe and he restarted the same conversation 3 times in an hour lunch (this symptom is pretty common in my experience with other dementia sufferers).

I met back with them a year later and he was very dependent upon his cell phone to look up people on Facebook, places on Google Maps, movies on IMDB, etc. (basically all nouns) in real time during the conversation to fill in the gaps in his memories. I lived with him for maybe 5-6 years and he had to look up my Facebook profile and pictures to try to pick up on any nostalgia that might catalyze a memory.

I suspect there is an underlying current of frustration, but probably not a high level cognitive realization (at least not a sudden one) that his mind is degrading.