When My Memory Changed After a Metoprolol Dose Increase

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The turkey was on the kitchen island. I had taken the package of minced turkey out of the fridge to make chili and set it there myself. A minute later, I went back to the fridge to get it. I searched every shelf. I moved things around and looked behind containers. I checked the freezer. I was frustrated, turned, and there was the turkey, sitting in plain sight where I had left it. I had no recollection of putting it there.

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It's a body rebirth where the truth gets told about medical mysteries and growing home with a little dark humor and a whole lot of grit. When his body throws a tantrum, he rolls with it.

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Welcome to A Body Rebels. I'm Tate. This podcast shares my personal experiences and is not medical advice. Please speak with your own provider before making medical decisions. The voice you're hearing is AI, because illness makes speaking difficult, but the writing, memories, opinions, and experiences are mine. I want to talk about the memory changes my wife and I noticed while I was taking Metoprolol and what happened when I called my cardiologist. I stood there looking at the turkey, trying to account for a minute of my own life. I remembered deciding to make chili. I remembered the package being in the refrigerator. Somewhere between those two memories, I had opened the door, picked up the turkey, carried it across the kitchen, and placed it on the island. The package sitting there told me what I had done. My mind gave me nothing. There is a difference between forgetting where you put something and having no memory of putting it there in the first place. I've misplaced things throughout my life. Everybody does. I've gone looking for my phone while the phone was already in my hand. I've walked into a room and forgotten why I went there. Those moments never scared me. This did. The turkey episode wasn't happening by itself. My wallet would disappear. My keys would disappear. My phone would disappear. A piece of paper I had been using would suddenly be somewhere else. I would start searching, and when I eventually found the thing I was looking for, I often had no memory of putting it there. With the turkey, something about the certainty bothered me most. I wasn't standing in the kitchen thinking, I know I took the turkey out. Where did I put it? I believed the turkey was still inside the refrigerator. I trusted my memory enough to search shelf after shelf. I moved containers. I checked behind things. I opened the freezer. For that entire search, my brain was giving me a version of events in which I had never removed the turkey. Then I turned around. There was reality sitting on the island. And my memory of reality didn't match. My wife had also begun noticing something. She would say something to me. I would answer her. A short time later, the conversation was gone. Not fuzzy. Not difficult to remember. Gone. From my side, I had no sense of ignoring her. I wasn't distracted on purpose. I wasn't deciding what she said wasn't important enough to remember. From her side, she had watched me listen and respond. I think having another person witness a change like this matters in a different way. When something happens only inside your own head, you start questioning yourself. Did I forget because I was tired? Was I distracted? Did I hear her correctly? Did I put the keys somewhere strange because I was thinking about something else? Then another person starts seeing the pattern. My wife knew these conversations had happened. She knew I had answered her. Then she watched me have no memory of them. That frightened both of us. Once memory becomes the problem, memory also becomes a difficult tool for measuring the problem. I began paying more attention to little gaps. I also began worrying about what those gaps meant. Alzheimer's came into my mind. Dementia came into my mind. Those are frightening words. I didn't know what was happening. I knew my short-term memory seemed different from what I was used to, and the difference was becoming hard to dismiss. There is another part of living with chronic illness people sometimes overlook. When something new happens, I already have a crowded medical history standing behind it. I've lived with sarcoidosis for 20 years. I live with heart failure. Medications have been part of my life for a long time. So when a new problem appears, there isn't always one clean explanation waiting for me. There are medications. There are medication changes. There are illnesses. There is fatigue. There are years of medical history. There is also ordinary aging. I didn't know which piece mattered. What I did know was the timing. My memory seemed to become noticeably worse after my mitoprolol dose increased to 200 milligrams. That didn't give me an answer. It gave me something specific to tell my cardiologist. The difference between those two things matters to me. I wasn't sitting at home deciding metoprolol had caused everything, but I noticed a change. My wife noticed a change. The change seemed to follow a medication increase. So I called. That phone call feels simple when I describe it now. At the time, I was bringing something frightening into the open. Memory loss has a strange emotional weight. Pain is terrible, but pain announces itself. Shortness of breath announces itself. If my legs hurt, I know my legs hurt. When memory starts slipping, the thing I depend on to tell me what happened becomes part of the uncertainty. I had proof of something I had done sitting on a kitchen island, and still no recollection of doing it. That got my attention. My cardiologist and I discussed what was happening, and we decided to change my medication from Metoprolol to COREG. I watched myself closely after the change. Within a couple of days, I noticed improvement. The difference stood out because those missing moments had become so disturbing. I wasn't suddenly trying to remember where I had put something I had handled seconds earlier with the same frequency. The conversations with my wife weren't disappearing in the same way. The change brought relief. I want to stay careful with how I describe this, because my experience belongs to me. I know the sequence. My mitoprolol dose had increased to 200 milligrams. My wife and I noticed worsening short-term memory problems. I called my cardiologist. My medication was changed to COREG. Within a couple of days, I noticed my memory improving. Those are the pieces I experienced. I don't need to turn them into a universal explanation. Someone else forgetting their keys has a completely different medical history, different medications, different circumstances, and a different reason for forgetting. What stayed with me was how easy some of the early moments were to dismiss. Misplacing keys sounds ordinary. Forgetting where I put my phone sounds ordinary. Forgetting something my wife told me sounds ordinary too. Especially if each event is considered separately. The pattern was what changed the meaning. One missing moment became another. Then another. Then my wife began noticing. Then came the turkey. I think the turkey became the moment I couldn't explain away because I had created an entire search around a false assumption. The turkey wasn't hidden. Nobody had moved it. I had moved it. I simply couldn't remember doing so. There was something unnerving about seeing such clear evidence of my own action without the memory attached to it. For a while, I became more aware of every forgotten thing. Every misplaced object seemed more important. Every conversation I struggled to recall carried more weight. Fear does that. Once I became afraid of my memory, ordinary forgetfulness no longer felt completely ordinary. I had to live with some uncertainty while also taking the change seriously enough to report it. My wife helped because she gave me another perspective. She wasn't relying on my memory of the event. She had her own. She knew she had spoken to me. She knew I had answered. When I couldn't remember the exchange, she was seeing the missing piece from the outside. That gave me information I wouldn't have had on my own. There is something humbling about another person telling you about a conversation you participated in and hearing the story almost as though you weren't there. I was there. I had spoken. I had responded. And my mind had failed to keep the record. I don't like thinking about how scared I was during those days. I also don't want to rewrite the experience now because things improved. Relief after something frightening doesn't erase the fear experienced before the relief arrives. When dementia and Alzheimer's entered my thoughts, those fears were real. When I stared at that package of turkey, confused by how it had gotten onto the island, the fear was real. When my wife told me about conversations I had forgotten, the fear was real. Then something changed. We changed the medication, and within a couple of days I started noticing improvement. For me, speaking up mattered. I've spent enough years around doctors and medications to know how easy it is to become accustomed to managing one more symptom. There is always something else. A pain, a medication, a test, a change in breathing, a bad day, a badder day. Something new enters the picture and becomes one more item in a long medical life. This one felt different because the change involved my sense of what had happened only minutes before. I didn't want to normalize it. I didn't want to wait until the examples became bigger. I had enough information to say, something has changed. I didn't need to know why before making the call. That part is worth remembering. I didn't call my cardiologist with an answer. I called with observations. Here is what my wife is seeing. Here is what I am experiencing. Here is when I notice the change. Here is the medication dose I am taking. That was enough to start the conversation. When I think back to the chili now, the whole episode seems almost absurdly ordinary. A package of minced turkey. A refrigerator. A kitchen island. No dramatic setting. No medical equipment. No emergency room. Nothing anyone else would have noticed from across the room. I was standing in my own kitchen preparing dinner. Then one small object told me something about myself I didn't know a minute earlier. My memory wasn't behaving the way I knew it to behave. Sometimes the changes worth mentioning to a doctor don't arrive with flashing lights. Sometimes they look like keys, a phone, a forgotten conversation, a package of turkey sitting exactly where I put it. I'm glad I paid attention to those small moments. I'm glad my wife paid attention too. And I'm glad I called my cardiologist when something no longer felt like me. This has been A Body Rebellance. I'd love to hear from you. Write to me with your thoughts on the podcast, the topics or issues you'd like me to discuss, or a story from your own life. With your permission, I might share your story in a future episode. I'm Tate. Thanks for sharing this time with me. Until next time, take care of yourself, keep breathing, and remember, sarcoidosis is only rare until you're the one living with it.