The self-described aging John Wayne

As part of my time here at the Clinic, I've been observing some of the doctors actually work with patients.

One that sticks out especially in my memory is a man I saw while shadowing a neuropsychologist, Dr. Michael Parsons. (A neurpsychologist essentially studies the relationship between the brain and behavior - so if a certain part of the brain isn't working right, how do the actions of the person change?)

I'm not sure how much I can say about this man because of HIPAA, but the reason why he came in was because his wife had been noticing the beginnings of some memory loss. He had a pretty intense Southern drawl (when he called himself a 'redneck,' I was very forcibly reminded of Doc Smith). He loved quoting John Wayne, especially "Never say sorry, it's a sign of weakness" (NCIS, Gibbs, anybody?) and "Life is hard, and it's harder if you're stupid," (to which Dr. Parsons replied, 'That's okay, we're not here to cure stupidity').

And then I sat in a completely white room for two and a half hours while he went through a battery of neuropsych testing, (testing higher executive functions, if you read my previous post), administered by a psychometrician (the person who gives these tests all day). There must have been at least fifteen separate tests. One of them involved remembering a list of words, another reorganizing a series of numbers and letters into their proper orders, another one requiring him to identify a series of pictures.

It must have been fascinating to do the research involved in creating these tests, etc. and it was really interesting to read about how exactly they test the brain, but watching the whole thing without being involved in the process got...really boring.

Yeah, I'm definitely not planning on being a psychometrician.