Brain fog isn't like a hangover or depression. It's a disorder of executive function that makes basic cognitive tasks absurdly hard.
[....] worked in artificial intelligence and analyzed complex systems without hesitation, but now "runs into a mental wall" when faced with tasks as simple as filling out forms. Her memory, once vivid, feels frayed and fleeting. Former mundanities—buying food, making meals, cleaning up—can be agonizingly difficult. Her inner world—what she calls "the extras of thinking, like daydreaming, making plans, imagining"—is gone. The fog "is so encompassing, [...] it affects every area of my life." For more than 900 days, while other long-COVID symptoms have waxed and waned, her brain fog has never really lifted.
Of long COVID's many possible symptoms, brain fog "is by far one of the most disabling and destructive," [...] from the University of Oxford, told me. It's also among the most misunderstood. [...]
20 to 30 percent of patients report brain fog three months after their initial infection, as do 65 to 85 percent of the long-haulers who stay sick for much longer. It can afflict people who were never ill enough to need a ventilator—or any hospital care. And it can affect young people in the prime of their mental lives.
Long-haulers with brain fog say that it's like none of the things that people—including many medical professionals—jeeringly compare it to. It is more profound than the clouded thinking that accompanies hangovers, stress, or fatigue. [...] distinct from and worse than her experience with ADHD. It is not psychosomatic, and involves real changes to the structure and chemistry of the brain. It is not a mood disorder: "If anyone is saying that this is due to depression and anxiety, they have no basis for that, and data suggest it might be the other direction," [...]
[...] brain often loses focus mid-sentence[...] “I forget what I’m saying[...] stopped [...] from driving, because she’d forget her destination en route. For more than a year, she couldn’t read, either, because making sense of a series of words had become too difficult.'
What Makes Brain Fog So Unforgiving
This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 12 September 2022 - 04:27 PM