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How brain fog feels…
I caught long Covid back in the pandemic, and Brian fog happened along with 3 other symptoms, but it took about 3-4 years to make a total fall in my intellect. For the first 1-8 months is simply a strange thinking way, becoming less grasping of your whole mental state, then comes the feeling. At about 5-10 months in brain fog makes you forget and not be able to think, and it holds the way through with you and it makes a feeling and with that feeling is less ability of your using your full well mind. It somehow takes 2 years from that point to fully developed into the losing of the rest of the symptoms of it yet your intelligence has lowered say 1/10th of your IQ from before. Now it’s over 4 years later I was an author and I was shut down from thinking, and it’s now I can build back my old ability slowly I can become smarter again. But that is one of the more common effects of long Covid and finding yourself on that path you come to the question of what is happening to me? It’s confusing and seeing how Covid still has a chance of being fatal or given the long Covid aftermath it’s still important to understand what maybe someone else is going through.
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Good description of brain fog. I had a terrible time describing it to doctors. So good to hear someone improved. I am into my fourth year and all these symptoms continue to get worse.
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3 ReactionsI dont believe it lowers ur IQ. But the problems it causes in the brain are so real. Perfect example of brain fog...my niece was out of town, wanted to give my sister and her husband a nice stay home date night without big sister up on 2nd floor. Thought i was so on top of things. I was also so missing my 21 yr old daughter. Its hard for her to visit me cuz she and her bf have apt, taking classes, working full time. I decided to get a night away at a hotel near my daughter. Found 63 rate for nice hotel with sinking tub and they were allowing me to bring my cat lol i packed up in miracle time of 30 min, sister loaded car for me, got to the hotel where the clerk and i discovered i had booked it for nov 22nd. I cried for 1 minute, pulled myself together and drove home. When they tried to change the date for that day, the rate tripled. So i now have room booked and paid for in nov. I knew i was in deep trouble in beginning of my LC when i could not do my daily crossword puzzle at all and when i tried to soothe myself with my adult coloring books i colored like a 3 yr old. Very humbling! Things are much improved now but cant read a book from concentration issues. I was told at neuro inst penn med that i had suffered a traumatic brain injury. This virus invades every system in our body and i have tried so hard not to think of it as an alien in my body cuz it really creeps me out.
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4 Reactions@suefish I just wish it would go away. Every time I feel better, I have a spell of remembering g nothing. Any comments?
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1 ReactionI know what you mean. What makes it even worse is that the non-believers (including my retired dr. spouse) keep telling
me that I’m just crazy, etc. I think that the brain fog is the worst — of everything but the more physical issues.
Bless you for sharing. My doctor husband has other thoughts and they all upset me.
@suefish I understand your frustrations, few of my family and friends are understanding. None have educated themselves on Long Covid and the fact that there are 400+ million of us suffering now.
Ask your dr spouse to just read all the Long Covid research. I was fortunately that Stanford provided me with significant medical research to read when they diagnosed me. The science is there for what is occurring to cause brain fog.
Mine was so bad recently after a Post Exertional Malaise (PEM) crash that I struggled to just complete simple thoughts and sentences when talking.
But you’re hitting on a real, very frustrating issue in the American medical community. Very few doctors are educated on Long Covid, the various sub-types, the symptoms, causes, treatment protocols and clinical trials ongoing. When I finally was diagnosed at Stanford this winter, it was apparent there were changes in my labs a year+ earlier that were missed by every one of my doctors. Why? Because none were educated on Long Covid and none explored Long Covid as the diagnosis. This despite my positive Covid test in late 2024, plus a Paxlovid rebound positive which was missed as a critical fact by all my doctors until I got into Stanford.
It will be 6 years LC for me in September. Brain Fog, along with dizziness/imbalance, were the primary symptoms why I was awarded Federal Disability (SSDI). I was a career bookkeeper. Also a poet and lay pastor.
This is how I described this life-debilitating symptom when I resigned, October 2024, from all duties in my various positions I’d attempted to maintain since onset in September 2020…
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I know it’s hard to understand the scope of my illness because you and everyone else see me at my best. What you don’t see are the days of fatigue and rest leading up to you seeing me at my best for a couple hours on Sunday, and maybe a couple of hours during the week. Although many are much improved, I still experience to some degree all the same symptoms I’ve had from the first [Onset 9/11/2020]. The most debilitating being Brain Fog and imbalance from dizziness. Just to give you an idea of what Brain Fog means for me, I want to read to you some entries from my Covid Journal as I have experienced it along the way:
Brain Fog:
Here are Journal Entries to give you my own words as I described them along the way…
>>> 10/4/2020
Sunday was one of my worst days. Struggled to breathe all day. Yesterday was better than Sunday. Brain in a fog - very hard to focus. Still in bed now, head swimming, chest pressure/pain, yada, yada...
>>> 10/29/2020
I’m really thinking the “brain fog” thing is a real thing. My therapist said that last week she didn’t want to freak me out, but she noticed I was missing words when I was talking to her. She knew the thoughts were there, but when I tried to put them into sentences, I missed saying some words.
>>> 3/3/2021
Traffic was slow-going down [HWY] to [City]. So slow, I was sincerely surprised when I got to [City] thinking I already had driven through it. :O
>>> 8/25/2021 [My definition for me]
“Brain Fog” - inability to focus and stay on point with regular tasks of daily living. (I am a writer and haven’t been able to write anything new in almost a year [now 6] and sometimes it can take an hour or two just to cognitively read through any kind of magazine, newspaper, online article…)
>>> 12/2/2021
Brain fog has affected my ability to accurately process bookkeeping functions for our e-commerce business (selling hobby greenhouse kits). My errors have cost us at least $10,000 since symptom onset.
>>> 3/4/2022
The worst part for me with the brain fog (only one of my many persistent symptoms), is that in the moment I think I’m doing [the task] well and then later find I missed steps in the process. IE: Toasting air because I forgot to put the bread into the toaster before turning it on; forgetting to process a customer’s payment - to the tune of $3000+ - before shipping out product. Sometimes discovering the error a year later and then having to go through legal channels to collect… things like that. Very frustrating for someone with OCD tendencies and a stickler for details! I feel I’m letting people down, including myself.
>>> 5/8/2024
Brain Fog has led me to continually make costly errors in our business operations. While I have seen great improvement in the majority of the cardiopulmonary symptoms, Brain Fog remains the most debilitating. Yesterday, I couldn't even remember what 9 x 7 equals nor the process to figure it out. It was a securit verification unlock question for parental controls for YouTubeKids :/ Everyone advises me to "write things down so you won't forget". The problem is, in the time it would take to find something to write "it" down on, "it" is long forgotten. Literally seconds from thought in and out. My husband may ask me what I'm doing, and my response is often, "I'm wandering". I can't count the times in a day I'm staring into the refrigerator or cabinet trying to figure out why. I eventually do, but the process takes up so much time, my days are far from efficient or productive. I struggle to have an intelligent conversation because I'm always searching for the proper words. IE:"You know, that actor who was in that movie about, you know. He was also in that movie with that actress, you know, who was in that show..." And so it goes. Every time I turn around another week [month, year] has passed, in which I rarely knew what day it was without consulting a calendar [or pillbox]. I have absolutely no concept of time. In general, thinking is exhausting.
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So, yes, I get it, as do you all. There is much comfort in knowing we are not alone. Blessings to all of you as you continue to navigate this altered life. I just have to remind myself it is still ‘life’ in which there are yet wonders to behold.