I am working full time, but am finding that I am not retaining information as well as I used to previously. This is causing me stress as I am worried about my job in the long term. Does anybody have any tips to help me cope with this, as well as ways in which I can discuss this with my Manager?
Hi Kate
Welcome to the forums! Have you spoken to your MS nurse about memory? I did, when it was becoming a problem for me, and they arranged for me to see the psychologist that is attached to the MS team in my hospital (in Cardiff). He did a whole barrage of tests, and he was able to identify exactly which types of memory were problematic. For me the biggest issue was future memory. Which I didn’t even know was a thing! Future memory is for where you need to remember to do something in the future, like saying when I’ve finished brushing my teeth I’ll put the toothbrush on charge. And because of future memory problems you don’t put it on charge, and you don’t remember thinking about it until you pick up the toothbrush and it’s running out of juice. (that was me three days ago!)
Where future memory really caused me problems in work was forgetting to write actions during a meeting. Sometimes I’d go to a meeting Forget to write down all the notes, and then two days later talking to a colleague I wouldn’t even remember that I’ve been to the bloody meeting.
The thing that I found helped me most in meetings was delegation. I would either have somebody from my team in the meeting with me, and I’d ask them to take notes of any actions that I had, or I would explain whoever was taking the minutes that I had these problems and would really appreciate it if they could make notes of actions that I had. Nobody ever had a problem with it.
As much as possible I would use my things to do list, put reminders in calendars, use Post-it notes, but often the problem was that I forgot to do them. I had to really become strict with myself, and forced myself to learn a new way of doing things which was to write anything down right now as it was happening, and not wait for example, for someone to finish their paragraph before I looked down and started writing. If somebody’s talking to you it’s seen as really bad manners to look away and start writing notes, because it looks like you’re distracted from them and not giving them your attention. I would have to explain to people what I was doing and why I was doing it, before the conversations started, so that they didn’t get the wrong impression and think that I was bored of them. Nobody ever had a problem with it, and it made everybody’s life much easier. It could even get a conversation going where I could say after we’ve had this meeting can you send me an email with all of the salient points and any actions that you need me to do. Winner winner chicken dinner! All of my team understood that when we talked about their performance or development and so on that they would need to email me afterwards outlining the discussion and what their actions were, and they would need to send me the calendar invites for follow-ups. Whenever I put an appointment in for something like a quarterly review I would also automatically put in another one for a week later to check that everything had been completed.
When it came to managers the approach that I had to take was: first - I have this problem, Second - the way that I manage it is by doing XYZ, and third - if you’ve got any questions please let me know. I think if I had said I’ve got problem X but don’t know what to do about it, then it might have turned a molehill into a mountain or at least made A molehill look a lot bigger. When it comes to what to say I’ve always found is that if I imagine one of my team coming to me and explaining the situation what wording would they use. Have you got an occupational Health team in your workplace? I always make sure that I kept in regular contact with mine, because they had a very good understanding of things like reasonable adjustments just in case I might need them one day.
If you could get an assessment then you’d be able to understand in more detail what the problems were and then at least you’d be able to look at what mitigations to put in place. And then hopefully you’ll remember to put them in place 
Hope you find that helpful
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Hi Kate, like you I have found it frustrating that information I could retain now just appears to vanish often at at the worst time usually when asked about it. Sometimes a few minutes or hours later I remember it (far from ideal).
At work it’s easily handled by doing something I am not great at - taking notes!!! I used to hate doing that and it was with pride I didn’t need to even think about doing it.
Now I spend my life noting things down - I think some is MS but I think getting older has a part to play.
Good luck
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Thank you for your response
Thank you for your response
This is probably more radical than you had in mind, but if mental fatigue arising from MS is at work here, might reducing your hours or moving to a less demanding role help? These are the sort of potentially ‘reasonable adjustments’ that your employer would be obliged to consider (although not necessarily obliged to grant) on account of your MS. Of course there’s lots to consider in terms of impact on income and benefits like pension, but if a lower income is something your household could bear, it might be worth considering in the interests of prolonging your working life.
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