Do You Remember? A Conversation on Memory & MS | Don Wade

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Do You Remember?”

    How many years has it been since you were diagnosed with MS? I got diagnosed in 2003. Okay, so you remember that day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the perfect example. I do remember when I got diagnosed, I got diagnosed November 2003. Do you remember your daughter's name? Yes, Kendall. Okay, wonderful. Do you remember what you ate last night? Absolutely not. Me either. You know, that was a good, that was a good question, and the answer, the answer was not really, absolutely not. It was, it really is not if you ask me X number off the cuff. If I sit down and think about it, I will eventually, I could eventually come to the answer, but it's not gonna be in the midst of the competition. Don't expect an answer by just asking me that question at this point. I agree with you. I can't remember what I ate last night either, you know. So, so moving ahead, so your long-term memory is great. It sounds like you can remember what happened when you were five years old. What happened? Tell us, tell us what happened. Give us a scene or a little chapter of what happened when you were five years old. When you were five, what do you remember about being five years old? If you can. Yeah, I remember playing with my brothers. You know what? My earliest memory is actually going over and staying with a friend because my parents were going to travel, and they took me over to that friend's house, and I was pissed because he was younger. And instead of the nice big bed that he got to sleep in, they put me in the, what do you call it? They basically put me in the crib and pissed me off. I did pissed off too. So he was younger, and you were older. Do you remember how many years between you guys had? You were older by how many years? Oh, he's a year younger than I am. OK, just a year younger. And he got a nice size bed and you got the crib. Yeah, as you can see, I'm still salty. I'm still salty about that. Did you ever see him again later in life? Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. He and I, yes, the answer is yes. So it seems like to me that some things happened in your long years and years and years ago, decades ago, that you still remember. But my question to you, how is your working memory? Yeah, it's interesting. I was thinking about that and I just didn't know. I remember I ended up taking two bar exams in this country, in New York and California, and I passed both of them the first time I took it. Oh, shit. And I was thinking about that, and the sheer volume of stuff you have to remember is huge.

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