My cognitive ability seems to be deteriorating?

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I feel as though I have a terrible short-term memory, and I am not really sure why. I forget where I left things, I forget what people said, I forget appointments, what day it is, names, numbers, random information, everything. It's even when I am on the ADD medication, so I don't know what my problem is. I also seem to have gotten worse at reading and writing; I read more slowly, reading out loud is more difficult, I misspell words much more frequently (often the same words, I switch letters around and can't see what's wrong with it, even comparing the right spelling they look the same), I occasionally skip a word or line while reading, etc. The words I misspell are usually the same exact ones, they often have double consonants or two different vowels next to each other, and I will switch them, or leave out the double, or put too many of a certain letter (this is usually while typing, I don't hand-write much so I'm not sure if that would be different). Sometimes while reading, I can even read a word that's on a different part of the page mid-sentence and not know where I got it from.

ADD might be an explanation (I'm still not sure if I have it), but it seems that even when I'm on the medication and it seems to be working (it doesn't work if I didn't get enough sleep), it doesn't help any of these things much. I can tell it's working because I feel like my mind is clear, my ability and speed of analysis increases quite significantly, and I become more articulate and formal when speaking. I do feel pretty devoid of emotion and expression when I'm on it, but I don't mind that; in fact, I actually kind of prefer it, because I feel like the emotions cloud my judgement and don't serve a real purpose for me anyway. I also feel a bit more withdrawn than usual, simply out of a desire to delve into my own thoughts, and I may end up pretty unaware of my surroundings. And like I said, I remain pretty much the same with everything else.

It worries me a bit because I don't think I ever had this much trouble with these things, and I don't know what the cause of it is. It doesn't seem to be ADD, and I don't see how it could be my Asperger's because it seems to be more recent development (the past 2-3 years or so). However, I did have a really horrible time those past few years (due to severe depression), so maybe that is part of it, but I don't feel as bad recently (past 3 months).

Hey man,

How's everything going? Are you back with your grandparents?

What I would do: I would write down my appointments.

As long as you're aware of your misspellings, and correct them right away, I don't see a problem.

I would attribute at least some of what you wrote to anxiety.

I am not back with them, but my grandma called yesterday and I explained to her my reasoning for not initially taking the offer to come back (I just have a hard time getting over the fact that my grandpa got physical like that with me, and both he and my uncle threatened me, when I was not doing anything that made either of those things necessary). I am just very sick of being treated like I'm a child, they shouldn't feel like they can do what they did.

I did agree to go over for dinner to talk about it on Thursday though.

It's great that you folks will talk about what happened, and that you will be able to express your feelings.

Maybe this might be the "cure" for all your ADHD-type things. It's very stressful for anybody to be out in the street, even the most NT of NT's.

I hope you find more stability with your grandparents.

I know the feeling with cognitive ability. I've noticed how most of the time, I can't even understand the concept of time. Things have to be done right away for me or I suffer meltdowns. I also find myself forgetting things often, but I think that's just my ADHD though. I lose things a lot, and I misplace things almost every single day. You could just have a cognitive disability. I know I've been told I have this is as well as an intellectual disability.

I feel like I am slipping in cognitive abilities as well. It comes and goes and sometimes is worse than others. Definitely worse under stress or fatigue. I wonder if that is a common Aspie thing.

Have you tried using something like a Electronic Calendar for keeping track of appointments.
You can set it up to remind you about 'events' via email/txt at a certain amount of time before.

also have you tried using speech to text software to 'dictate'. I use it in Evernote and while it doesn't get every word perfect, it's easier to get a thought down quickly.