Just finished your first chapter.
Your focus on norepinephrine… I don’t believe from direct observation of a man I’m taking care of (family friend, not as a professional care giver) who is in the beginning stages of dementia is correct. When I say beginning, I’m the only one picking up on it, despite his whole family being in medical fields.
I was working in the hospital at the time as a janitor, and both he and his wife was admitted on the basis of the flu, to the Heart Ward… was the most incompetent Ward in the hospital, the ICU attached was good, but the rest was incompetent chaos. I follow the basic philosophy of Doc Adams, a west Virginia physician, of encouraging joy in patients as a healing device. That floor of ducking savages could give a fuck about that… it isn’t warranted as part of their job, people are dying too much and there is too much overcrowding.
So when he was admitted, he went into a deep state of psychological shock and isolation, even to his wife which we got moved into the room with him. He always demanded the door be closed, curtains shut, no music, no tv, no talking, etc. He list all track of time, etc.
He was well know by some of the nurses and doctors, as he was their science teacher in high school. He us a WW2 vet, his entire unit wiped out in the air force save him and another… he wasn’t trained when they were… Was then trained for the B-29 to drop nuclear bombs, was set to drop one a week after, but Japan surrendered. I’ve looked over his information he claims to of been trained on, appears technically correct for how we operated back then… I lived on a Air force base as a child, know the basics of how rear bombing sights done on late cold war aircraft work (most people aren’t aware there is a rear underbelly cockpit).
I knew something was up, so I sat with him… just sitting with him for a few hours each day after work, just so he would have human contact… he lives a block from me, so knew me.
He couldn’t keep track of time, was always asking what day it was, cause the doctors earlier… hours earlier asked. I would say it 20-30 times, sometimes the false date, just to see how he reacted. I told him Reagan or Kennedy was president, or a failed Presidential candidate… no fucking clue I was playing a trick on him.
He would get angry militant when I turned on TV, refused the radio I brought (his wife used it with headphones, read the newspaper I brought him daily).
She recovered, he didn’t. He listens to me as he sees me as a authority figure, he always saw me as highly intelligent and I’m sure I invoke memories of the army. I realized I could exploit this, so quite unethically told him Doctor Smee (Me) said in order to get better, he had to listen to the TV one hour, or read out loud the news paper.
He would build in cognitive function, memory became more stable. He would give up, pass out.
I kept this going, playing old music off my tablet… was hooked up to wifi. He would listen, start moving his hands to it.
After a month, he was let out. In the end, he couldn’t fix a urinary tract issue, so was bound by internal catheter. He wouldn’t accept this, doctor wasn’t telling the truth, his highly educated family wasn’t… so I told him simply he would never till his last day be without his catheter, you exist less for yourself and more for others at thus point, just accept it.
He did, family was a bit upset I didn’t bullshit him, but he accepted it, was quickly discharged after he didn’t insist on getting his family to run more and more tests. I left the job shortly after being denied a promotion to working in the mechanical room by the union (hospital very much wanted to keep me) and was sitting around unemployed. Was contacted within three days by the family. They hired me to watch him a few nights a week, the wife, a retired nurse, couldn’t keep eyes on him 24 hours straight.
So a few nights a week, I or his daughters watch him nightly.
I’ve been observing onset aspects of Alheimerz like behavior, but it isn’t too obvious yet (I worked a short while as a nursing assistant in my teens in such a facility). He has dropped all former activities, except working in the yard in the hit Sumner sun (90 years old, hot and very humid here)… which pisses me off. He insists on doing it. He at his best asserts OCD traits, including in his dreams. I have those traits too, so is easy to recognize them for what they are. I’m told he always have had these traits, quick to anger.
But when he becomes fearful or despondent, he stupidfies. He has Musical Ear Syndrome now (as do I), running about trying to find where “that noise” is coming from. It is coming from lack of sensory information during the day. His wife gave up my therapy of making him play music, as he is used to dominating her, having a final say. I can’t play it while he sleeps.
I’m largely there because he fears dying in his sleep. I perform no useful function. I clear and water plants outside at dawn, not much else can be done.
He recently had a complete collapse into full blown child like thinking, like in the hospital. Object Recognition was gone, he didn’t comprehend at all what was going on. I was calked over, ran some questions to zero in on what he could get, and couldn’t.
Family noted he tried drinking detergent, then unscrewed the pepper, starting eating it. I saw nothing special about the last, but the family did… All through his life, he had low salt levels. Would unscrew the salt, eat a little in his palm when he felt it was low… thus is American Table salt, not Sea or Kosher Salt.
So… I discussed with the daughter my perplexity… his behavior went in cycles, he was just then exactly like in the hospital. I said it was almost like a blodclot, something restricting a feedback loop in the mind… but certainly wasn’t, cause I doubted very much he would still be around if he constantly had them. She said maybe a small stroke… but that doesn’t explain the recovery and my ability to aid him using simply techniques to increase his self awareness, ability to process information, etc.
She said her gut said it was Salt in balance, could cause a restriction in a blood pathway. I agreed it was a possibility, was a philosopher, not a doctor, but asked which salt would be in imbalance… neural activity need all four salts in balance, or I should say in balance, to process information diectionally… It is what allows the charge to carry in the fusrt place, and this in balance (like a battery) not only carries a charge, but acts like a referee flow Diode.
He was tested, salt was indeed low… was put on a high salt diet, one he immediately rejected once it took effect… he knows how to maintain his salt balance.
So… Things I’ve noted, that checks the presumptions in your first chapter. He sleeps much more when this occurs… I don’t think this in coincidental… the mind gets rid of neuronic impurities in the sleep cycle. This frequent napping in the elderly would act as a periodic buffer to your idea of neuronic over clocking in the NLMS system. The need to reassert new salts is often not noticed by professionals… as the body is getting rid of toxins, it needs to drain some of the salts and rebalance them in the REM cycle of sleep to aid in relearning.
I’m guessing this salt in balance, something we rarely test for unless you have heart issues… and even in his case when on such a chaotic Ward Rand by flying monkies, easily overlooked, can contribute overtime to the diminishing effects of balanced growth, that you noticed in n-trillinth or below availability.
Notice his OCD behaviors leads to marital Dominance… he is very judgmental, quick to angry, curt judgment.
We balance this against his dopamine fear response. This comes from his whole family, not just wife and children, but parents, being medical… except him so he couldn’t know what was going on, as well as exceptionally long lived… well over a hundred. He never was hospitalized since the 1960s, sees his inability to rid himself of the catheter as a personal failure… each damn visit he makes once a month to the uriologist.
Its obvious this related to a dopamine- norepinephrine imbalance, as a follower (aparantly the last… the only doctor, himself in his 90s who knew and followed him is himself in the 90s, had a stroke recently. Nobody takes that theory seriously anymore save me, a non-medical philosopher) of Doc Adams, I stroke systematically his Serotonin lows to highs. It follows the Lovheim Cube:

Thing is, I’m not certain which salts are off in relation to the related cytoarchitecture… the fear response batters his memory, sleeping recovers it a bit, but without the serotonin, he doesn’t cone out of it, and that setotonin impulse us always external (me, someone reassuring him). He oftentimes gets on the phone… or thinks he is on it, uses it like a walkie talkie screaming into it when it us off… Calling his son the pharmacist or daughter the nurse, saying not to abandon him, he needs them… ect. They don’t want to put him in the home yet. He doesn’t tolerate visitors, including me, during the day. He went nuts in the home they had him in for a short while after his hospitalization.