Memory Matter

When deciding whether to radiate, I did my homework and met with many different specialists. But, the potential parade of horrible side effects was long and varied and never consistent between any 2 practitioners. So, we never really knew what we were getting into (except that we were hopefully getting out of another recurrence). Until last night, I thought Jude had made it through radiation unscathed (except for the hair loss, which is correcting itself). However, after I watched Jude fail to earn his karate white belt for the 6th time or so and realized how surprised the karate school manager was that Jude couldn’t remember the meaning of the 5 karate words necessary to earn the belt, I realized that Jude has a memory problem. Jude has never had a memory problem before. In fact, his memory pre-radiation was remarkable. He knew all 50 states and all the U.S. Presidents by the time he was 3. He was truly a whiz kid and would soak up anything we threw at him. But, I’ve been working with him daily for weeks now on the meaning of these 5 karate words and he just can’t get it. I looked back at his neuropsychological evaluation from a year ago (pre-radiation) and his memory was superior in all categories. His neuropsychological evaluation was repeated post-radiation and the results were fairly deplorable. In one memory category, he actually improved, from superior to 2 points more superior, but in all the other categories his memory had fallen from superior to average and in one case from superior to “borderline impaired.” It took me 3 months to realize this probably because Jude was so high functioning pre-radiation. Thank God for that! So, even though he’s in first grade, he still doing just review work and hasn’t really been required to learn new things. I have an appointment set up with the Ph.D. who did Jude’s testing to figure out what we can do about this. I’m hoping that maybe his brain will re-wire itself and this will just be a temporary problem. So sad to see.