My Moment of Flakiness

[henyrjonze]

I had a WEIRD experience two days ago: I got in my car to go shopping, started the engine as normal, but I could NOT get the car out of Park (this is an automatic shift car) and into gear. I restarted the car and the same thing happened. However, when my husband took a look, he was able to get it in gear with no problem. So I'm now thinking that the car didn't start because of something flaky going on in my head. Yesterday, by contrast, I had to take the car out to do my errands, and the gears acted just fine. My question is: do any of you think that my APS had anything to do with this odd incident? Has anyone had a "lapse" like this? I'd appreciate any thoughts anyone might have.

[HollyHeski Administrator]

All the time!! Easier to blame on APS than 'old age' lol.Especially when I'm tired 😫

[Lure2]

Hallo there,

I wonder what sort of anticoagulaton drug you are on for your symptoms? Also if you have got a Specialist who understands what you are going through? Exstremely important to have.

Before I was in range with my Warfarin (I need an INR of 4.0 to feel ok), I had a lot of neurological symptoms. Try to learn as much as you can about APS. "Sticky Blood Explained" by Kay Thackray is a very good book to understand this rather unusual illness.

Kerstin in Stockholm

[henyrjonze in reply to Lure2]

Thank you. Medically I'm i n good hands. When I had a stroke in 2003, I was transferred to Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston because 2 local hospitals in New Hampshire couldn't figure my case out. Now, 18 years later,, I'm pretty stable. INR mostly in range, drugs I take are warfarin, plaquenil, Azor (for high blood pressure, and atorvastatin

[henyrjonze]

Ahhhh.....age is such a bitch, isn't it?

[Lure2 in reply to henyrjonze]

I am 77 but when we have APS it is not about age. I am better now than when I was 65 and had not started Warfarin. It has to do with our blood that must be in range otherwise anything can happen.

[GinaD]

Or it could have been the car. My Subaru Impreza is great EXCEPT for the special twist of the wrist that is needed to pull the key out of the ignition slot. The touchy key release started about 18 months after we purchased it. At first, my husband could pull it out but I couldn't and had to go ask him to come and remove the key (all the while the car is dinging to tell me the key was still in the ignition.) It took a while for me to realize that we just used slightly differing muscles when we removed the key. But at first, I attributed my failures to mental deficiencies. And why the slot suddenly became so annoying? Who knows?

[henyrjonze]

I have since analyzed the situation. I knew it wasn't the car bcz my husband shifted it just fine. Yesterday I paid extra attention to how I shifted it into gear and AHA! I'd tried to go into gear without the emergency brake on! Who knows why I left it off? Guess it was just momentary flakiness. . . .

[Ray46 in reply to henyrjonze]

That made me remember an incident from my youth, a commotion from the outside and we found mother screaming blue murder at her brand new car and what she was going to do to the salesman who sold it her. She was,(I vaguely recall) trying to get it across (manual/stick shift) into reverse with her foot bracing herself against the sides of the open door to get most of her weight on it. She'd picked it up that morning and (luckily) hadn't needed reverse until she wanted to turn round on the driveway and go back out.

Teenage me decided no one made a gearbox that needed that much force to shift, got the manual out of the glove box, ignoring the shouting about did I think someone didn't know how to drive or select reverse gear, and found the bit in the manual about selecting reverse. Car had a reverse lockout, a ring under the gear knob that you had to lift first, bit of a new feature back then. I think I left the manual open on that page facing my mum and left the area, rapidly

Oh for the certainty of youth, these days I'm doing well if I can get into the right seat of the right car and not have to search all my pockets for the keys I must have had only a moment ago to unlock the door. All I have to do then is remember where I was supposed to be going...

[henyrjonze]

Ha! I can just hear your mum! I usually know where I'm bcz I've rehearsed the route and its ultimate destination a hundred times before I set off.

[KellyInTexas Administrator]

…blankly stares at the washing machine and all the buttons as if they might be for a lunar landing gear. Absolutely no recall how to make the machine work.

Oh yes. Time to check the old INR!

[henyrjonze in reply to KellyInTexas]

Ahhh! I was there (more or less) this past week, when I stared blankly at one of those trays that roasted deli chicken comes in. I mistook it for one of those trays that predone salmon comes in and put my chicken the oven. Luckily the chicken was all right, but the plastic tray, . . .not so much. It melted onto the oven rack and gave off the most godawful plastic fumes. It took three open windows (in December!), two fans and a four-hour oven cleaning to get rid of the stench. Our cats had refused to enter the kitchen during the "plastic invasion," but when the air cleared, there they were, demanding chicken and salmon!

[MaryF Administrator]

Hiya, I think a lot of us get lapses like that, important also to keep any eye on Ferritin, B12, Iron and Thyroid, D etc. Lack of B12 can cause cognition problems, glad I have regular injections of it. Before I treated my B 12 deficiency and also Thyroid, my concentration and memory was far worse. MaryF