A Mind of Her Own
Thursday, May 5, 2011 at 12:32PM 
Long-term survivor Maggie Atkinson adds cognitive problems to her list of HIV-related issues. Here she takes a walk down memory lane and shares what she's learned about protecting her brain.
I FIRST NOTICED a slight reduction in my ability to think clearly in 1993, when my CD4+ cell count fell below 200. I just didn't feel as sharp.
A year later when I got PCP, the life threatening pneumonia that is a hallmark of AIDS, my handwriting deteriorated so much that I had to concentrate to write legibly.
About five years ago, I started having trouble remembering names of famous people. Over the next couple of years, these memory lapses progressed to the names of colleagues and then friends, which was awkward, to say the least.
I also began to have difficulty finding words. It started with complex words. My brain would substitute another similar-sounding or simpler word. My sentences began to be filled with 'thing' or 'stuff' or 'you know'.
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