Sure, no scars, but wouldn’t he have gotten a black eye seemingly out of nowhere? Most descriptions I’ve read of ice pick lobotomies note a black eye being the sole external evidence.
akimbo gait, you haven’t really addressed your concerns about delayed puberty. How late an onset are we talking about? Some of us are just late bloomers and the ball doesn’t really get rolling until 14-16.
They were taken before the FDA approved it for children and adolescents for the use that they was prescribed for.
I don’t know what problems there are. I just want the peace of mind that taking them didn’t cause any problems because I knew they didn’t solve them because I didn’t need them.
Sometimes I feel cognitively slow, take slightly longer than others to draw a conclusion or remember something (on most occasions the reverse is true, although that’s evidence more of my peers’ general ability level rather than a certainty that no cognitive deficits were permanently installed.
Would the doctors go ahead with lobotomizing me if my parents requested it? I read a story a few years ago that they removed a girl’s ovaries because her parents wanted to. Maybe my parents requested a lobotomy and the doctors went along with it.
I’m generally calmer than many of my peers but I laugh inordinately frequently, but nevertheless am more reclusive than many of my peers so I thought maybe a lobotomy or the meds stunted social cognition as well as cognitive functions.
I don’t think was delayed because I showed the typical signs within the normal range. I’m more concerned about the extent to which I’ve developed. Wonder whether there would have been more growth, sexual maturity or comfort around opposite sex. Or maybe they produced an incongruity in the development of the different areas that change during puberty (voice, hair, sebaceous glands, some other more prominent ones). Some aspects seem to be fine while others leave room for doubt.
No. If you’re young enough to have taken Wellbutrin and Abilify as a child, you’re too young to have had a lobotomy. Lobotomies are no longer done for any reason, and it has been that way for many years. A doctor would not do an operation just because the parents asked for it unless there was a medical reason to do it. Nowadays it is understood that lobotomies have no legitimate medical purpose.
I would strongly suggest seeing a doctor to tell him about your feeling of being “cognitively slow” and see if the doctor can offer any other explanations or other tests to check it for you. There are a lot of reasons why someone might feel that way that have nothing to do with taking psychiatric medication or being lobotomized.
A poster above said that lobotomy stopped being a common practice, but a handful are still performed each year. What other mentally incapacitating operations do doctors perform nowadays, under what circumstances do they perform them, and is parental request one of those circumstances?
Also, I don’t know whether I’m really cognitive slow. I just know most things don’t come to me instantly, and I can’t work out all logical propositions in my head. My tongue also gets tripped up sometimes. Could the medicine or a surgical procedure have damaged my language centers in my brain?
If a wasp stings me and my arm swells up, I assume it’s an allergic reaction to its sting, and don’t conclude that maybe it stung someone with elephantiasis first and transmitted it to me. Or if a corn field gets flattened, it’s more likely to be teenagers than aliens. In other words, the simplest explanation makes the most sense, unless you have evidence to the contrary. It is extremely unlikely that you ever had a lobotomy, but if you’re willing to pay for it, an MRI would tell you for sure.
You’re describing things that everyone on the planet experiences from time to time. The problem is not those occasional stumbles, but the fact that you are leaping from those to what most people would consider a completely illogical and unjustified worry about damage to your brain.
It’s good to want more information about yourself and how to operate the being that is you for best effect. That’s information going forward. I’m not sure how looking back will help unless there has been major upheaval between you and your parents and you want to know if it’s safe to drop your guard.
You said that you don’t agree with the doctor’s diagnosis, but you don’t say what that was. That’s your priviledge. Did your parent’s agree with the doctor? Do they still?
I had a huge concussion when I was ten. (The most common cause of brain disfunction in children is head injuries.) It’s possible that I could get a scan and find some neural re-routing. But assigning any difficulties to it would be speculative, so I’m probably never going to check.
If something feels off, you’re allowed to try to improve it even if there isn’t a cause to point to. Do you have trouble focusing on things that you need to do? Is it hard for you to get organized? Do you have trouble keeping track of time? Do you have difficulty identifying the emotions of others from their facial expressions and tone of voice? Do you feel anxious in social situations? These are all things that can be identified and addressed without identifying a point of damage.
There is evidence that whether a person is introverted or extroverted is largely stable over a person’s life. So if you’re introverted now, you probably always will be. But social skills can be improved with practice. Other difficulties have other therapies or strategies for coping.
Puberty and development are usually not smooth. My youngest grew fifteen inches when he was thirteen. His nose and feet grew the year before. He was pretty good natured about the joking.
My middle son grew later. He was still shorter than me (his mom - he hated that) when he was sixteen. But he had a growth spurt that year and passed me. Then he had other spurts at eighteen, twenty-one, and twenty-six. Now he’s close to six feet tall. Neither one of them has a beard worth speaking of.
Smoothness of development is not the same as completeness of development is not the same as comfort with the opposite sex. Unless you’re gathering information in the hopes of suing someone for breaking you, you’re better off identifying what your problems are now and planning for the future.
Oh, and Rhythmdvl was making a reference to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. You’d have to have two heads for that to work.
Another question would be, have you always thought about there being something broken in your brain or have you only started thinking about it recently? If the latter, has anything changed recently?
I know of none.
The things you’re asking about are common feelings and concerns. The conclusions you’re drawing about how they came about, are not.
My parents were and are not medically conversant. They’d agree with the doctor on any possible diagnosis, even the most bizarre ones.
Yes, that’s the plan. If I’ve been lobotomized then I doubt there’s much I can do. If however, the two medicines that I had taken caused some chemical imbalance or damaged some nervous bundles, that might be reversible. So I’d like to identify the deficiencies of my brain’s functions and then proceed to fix them if possible.
No I thought about them first during the last two years of high school. The thought has recurred to me fitfully since then. Lately, I’ve been preoccupied with tasks and necessities. Now I have some idle time and that thought reappears whenever I grow discontent with the speed with which I accomplish academic projects.
I’ve looked over your posts and I’m a bit concerned that you are anxious about your medical and mental well-being. I think its a good idea to print off all of your questions that you’ve asked on this board and set a doctor’s appointment.
They will be much more trust worthy and be able to prescribe a course of action (and any possible medication you might need). And they will do a much better job at it than anyone here. Trust me…
Also, is there a reason you can’t ask your parents what medical procedures you’ve had in your life? It sounds like you’re about college age; putting together your medical history isn’t a bad idea for anyone.
I didn’t print my posts but I did go to a specialist and he concluded, based on his simply conversing with me, former GPA, the school I currently attend, my standardized test scores, and no evidence in the literature that the medicine that I had taken hamper cognitive development, that I have a high capacity and nothing to worry about.
However, he also said that prescription of those medicine to children, even though it’s FDA-approved, is controversial. Moreover, I found out from an examination of my records that I had also taken Seroquell and Paxil for 4-8 weeks. All of the medicines’ FDA warnings indicate possible cognitive impairment, but don’t specify what kind. They just say don’t operate things requiring fine motor skills until the patient consults with the prescribing doctor.
Am I confusing that kind of cognitive impairment with logical reasoning, memory, and other forms of academic cognitive function?
We finished without doing a neuropsychological test. Is there a way I can prove medical necessity for the test beyond peace of mind stemming from assurance that the medicine indeed caused no structural or functional damage, instead of merely that the literature shows no indication of that possibility?
There’s likely a difference between short-term impairment due to the immediate effects of the drug (i.e., you’re effectively “driving drunk” until that dose of the drug wears off), and long-term damage to your brain, or impeding growth during childhood / adolescence, which is what you’re asking about.
Then how would you explain memory loss’s listing as a possible side effect?
Anyone who knows how the mechanisms between those medicines work, do they act on any region or in any way that relates to pubertal and cognitive growth?