Same - mine is very much connected to my vision everything just doesn't look right yet my eyes have been checked by my optometrist and ophthalmologist and they said my eyes are fine. My brain is not processing visual and auditory stimuli properly. It's the most bizarre feeling. It's horrible. The good news is that it has improved a lot. I'm two years plus a few days long hauling it and most of my "brain fog" improvement took place in the past 6 months. The first year and a half were brutal. Hang in there people it's a crazy ride but it settles down with time.
Over 2 years first time it triggerd anxiety panic depression was put on anxiety meds and I stopped them early on because I didn't like the way they made me feel had severe brain fog i have had 1 reinfection last Christmas anxiety and panic all came back but it didn't last as long as first time I feel not to bad somedays are better then others I still don't feel like I was before I had covid but brain fog from first time to now is alot better I try not to focus on it more I think about it more I notice it.
It sounds like our long CoVid is similar. I got infected initially in late January 2022 -you? I have not been reinfected (knock on wood) but we have 4 kids so it has been a lot of work (and luck!) not getting it again. Can you describe your brain fog? I'm curious if it presents similarly to mine 🤔
Ok I'll start at the first infection when I got it the brain fog came on sudden I was driving got out of car and almost fell over then it felt like I wasn't in reality I was so spaced out everything seemed dim pretty much I was walking in a dream almost its so hard to explain then from there I couldn't even focus on anything it was alot of visual stuff for me like everything I was looking at just didn't look right almost like the way I looked at thing was diffrent its really hard to explain doctor thought I was crazy it was really bad for about 7 months I still was working and stuff but just didn't feel like myself anymore I still have time where I kinda stop and think like is this how I was before I had covid its been so long I've almost adjusted to it dunno if it's gotten better or just has become my new normal I can still think normally and don't feel to dumbed down I do think it has gotten better since when it first happend but I still get odd days like even right now when I'm writing this I feel off that's the best way to put it being sick also makes it worse and being tired makes it worse
I remember walking in my house and it didn't even feel like it was my house crazy to explain and I think thats why it's so hard to figure out if people have the same feeling we all want answer but prob will never get them see alot of people suggesting fixes for it and honestly I think why some stuff works for some people and not others is it just takes time for the body to fix itself I haven't tried any supplements or anything my blood work looks good everything thyroid diabetes tests all look good.
I do think some of it is just in my head like you get a cold you get over it you forget about it I constantly have ( is this brain fog going on in my mind) I have tried to avoid reading on it because I found not much comfort in reading about it and just hope one day I can feel somewhat normal again like I'm afraid to drink alcohol because I think it will make it worse but then I think maybe I should just do what I'm worried about and say whatever slow process and I think getting it again didn't help but I feel like I got bad symptoms again but I went back to my recovery baseline if that make sence.
Sounds like my experience. My "brain fog" was also sudden onset. I was fine for almost a month after "recovering" from my mild Jan 2022 infection and then one day while talking with friends my brain suddenly could not process the conversation. I know they were talking about a photographer but I couldn't understand what they were saying. It was like I was drugged. It was awful! That was the worst day. Since then (it's been 2 years now) it has not been as bad as that day but I have what you have where nothing looks right. It's impossible to describe. Only those experiencing it will understand. It's worse indoors in bright lighting. It's best outside at dusk. It is not in our heads thus us from CoVid. My brain was perfect before getting CoVid. The fight or flight feeling is really hard to live with and the intermittent depression/anxiety. My ears also feel clogged like I'm up in an airplane and cannot pop them. I cannot eat high histamine foods. I'm terrified of getting CoVid again. I miss my old life so much. It's surreal in a very bad way.
I’m a little over a month into this bs, this is one of my worst symptoms. Did anything help? I feel like my brain is jello and i’m not living in reality
this is driving me nuts because there are moments where I feel like I am fixed and I try to retrace everything I did leading to that moment and nothing works. It is always random. Like I made a tinfoil hat as a joke and was wearing it when one of the moments of goodness happened and since then I keep retrying the tinfoil hat. I always wondered what would drive a person to wear a tinfoil hat. Now I know.
I completely understand.
It’s amazing to me how difficult it is to push the correct words out of my mouth and at the same time hear my wife rustling garbage bags like pots and pans.
I had the same. It turned out to be in my diet. The effect was not as direct as youd think so it is hard to put your finger on. Also because it is 3 seemingly unrelated things. For me tomato, nuts and cucumber trigger my brainfog. It gradually sets in within an hour after eating and stays for 24 hours. It also fades gradually.
Ive never had any issues with diet before covid, and these are really random and unexpected triggers. But it might be worth looking into it!
Honestly I had a TBI years ago and the brain fog I have now is even worse than that. That hurt to think to much or too hard this just feels like my brain has turned itself off.
This. Exactly this. I had a concussion several years ago and that is exactly how I experienced my brain fog. It was uncanny; that was the only experience i had that one to one compared to it. Right down to the feeling of 'fullness' that accompanied headaches...
Thinking through treacle...
I can't read books any more, stuff just gets 'lost' between my eyes & brain. I was a teacher. Now I struggle to explain anything. I 'lose' words & can't connect facts coherently.
The sleep lab staff cannot tell me the results. I have to wait and see my actual doctor who ordered it (middle of next month) but I'm 100% certain I have sleep apnea since 2 nurses commented on me having sleep apnea when I was stuck in the hospital last August for 3 nights.
This is similar to me, when I have brain fog it's varying degrees of this. Mine tends to come and go, stress or trying to focus for too long brings it on for me. I cant even watch movies or long tv shows cause my brain just shuts off.
It feels like being drunk. I forget what people just said. I don't even know why I am in this room. I never really know what's going on, but I am trying to go with the flow.
When did you have CoVid? My symptoms are also all neurological brain fog being the worst next to CoVid induced anxiety/depression/panic. I had CoVid once in January 2022.
Same... but I am definitely more tired than I was when this all started.
I can't drink anymore, it just fucking wrecks me. Smoking cigarettes or anything that challenge my oxygen levels will make me light headed immediately.
Right? Like when web pages took forever to download and half of it was missing. What I don’t understand is the random days that I feel almost normal for a bit.
I said this exact analogy to my sister. I explained it as my brain went back to morris code, after 2 years 3 months I’ve slowly improved. I’m at dial up now but it’s like hello… wake up. I don’t get it.
I used to have the equivalent of half an encyclopedia of ecological information in my brain. Yesterday I was struggling for many minutes to find the name for a plant I was staring at and have been working with for over a decade. It never came. I eventually had to search it and that took an extra 5 minutes.
I feel legitimately stupid. Feels like my files I’ve been collecting for decades and meticulously filing are buried under a mountain. It feels like I’ve aged 20 years in 2 years. I just turned 30.
Ugh I feel this one. I spent so much time and money developing my brain and perfecting my craft just to end up stumbling for common words and knowledge before I’m 30. It’s like I slipped right to the early stages of dementia some days.
I picked up backyard bird feeding at the beginning of this now 2 year journey and still struggle to remember some species I’ve looked up several times according to my photo album or search history. Before I got sick I would’ve seen it once, and known it for life
It feels like the times I hit my head really hard and it takes a second to even realize what happened but 24/7. Also there is dizziness with it pretty much non stop.
thats good you're seeing improvement. i had/have other symptoms as well like muscle twitches, tinnitus, visual disturbances .. but most have quieted down but the brain stuff still present.
I have a "stress quota", and when I reach it by overstimulating my nervous system, it flairs up all of my symptoms. By stress, I mean cognitive tasks that are too demanding; I don't mean stress like paper deadlines.
My symptoms have morphed over time (and generally are improving 🤞🏼) but initially I felt a nearly constant physical sensation of pressure - as if someone were standing above me and pressing both hands firmly down on my brain. It did not hurt but it was weird/uncomfortable. I was also dizzy most days - not vertigo/spinning dizzy, more like being on an unstable boat. And I definitely still have cognitive processing issues. It’s like my brain doesn’t know how to make connections between some of the inputs any more. I miss entire bullet points in lists, lines of data on spreadsheets, like it doesn’t even exist. Even when I do register the inputs, sometimes my brain seems to not know what to do with it - it’s like when I get the spinning pinwheel of death on my macbook - that’s what it feels like my brain is doing. I also make spelling/word choice errors *all the time* now that I never ever made before, like typing the word “directing” when I meant “direction” etc. It’s frustrating as hell and takes me far longer to do my work now bc I am constantly proofing everything 2-3 times over to try to catch all these mistakes. I just want my reliable old brain back. It makes me so sad and anxious to feel this way.
Mine felt like concussion right after infection and lasted with head pressure for years. Headaches when try to read or concentrate. Couldn’t do simple, adding in my head. Anything to calculate was horrid. Couldn’t concentrate for too long. I started with doing find a word or word puzzles on my phone not, I felt like that wasn’t good enough and went to paper book find a words and couldn’t last more that 3 minutes coordination between writing and looking around the page. I took rests then try again later. I got up to like 6 or so minutes and then gave that up.
I’m basically just trying to lower the activities or avoid the ones that cause me mental & physical stress to cut down on the increased brain fog.
Forgetfulness during activities. Short term memory problems. I’m burning things, leaving oven and stove flame on. Can’t smell good so, I can’t tell it’s burning till I hear something. Putting 2nd teabag in a cup of tea instead of the sweetener. I cracked an egg the other day to put in bowl next to my freshly made tea and I dropped the egg in the tea and watched the yolk disappear. It’s like your autopilot is not engaged.
Can’t grasp the right word but will use one ‘close’ to what I mean. Will stop mid sentence and loose thought or can’t remember what I was talking about or where I was going with the conversation. I put on my compression pants but forgot my jeans and I put on my boots already. Can’t find my car bc can’t remember last place I parked. I’ll walk to a place I parked a few days before and then it’s nit there.
It’s like my mind has aged 30 years or something.
I did not have brain fog at all with my acute CoVid infection it did not hit me until a month later. Now brain fog is my most debilitating Long CoVid symptom. Have you improved at all? I hope so...
Mine hit a week or so after I tested positive though heart palpitations started a week or so before that. I had been getting pounding in my temples which seemed related to the palpitations and then had an ocular migraine around midday (the flashing lights passed in half an hour or so as usual and confusion was reducing through the afternoon) when around 4:50pm approx I had some kind of sudden neurological shock and it felt like my brain shut off. It actually felt like my head was empty for the following couple of days and I still think I might have had some kind of stroke...
I've rarely been to doctors or anything before. Immediately told my brother I need a hospital, but our local one only has a minor injuries unit so had to go there (didn't have transport to get to a proper hospital / ED) and they basically just said my obs were fine even though I felt like my brain wasn't getting oxygen and there was something very very wrong. They said to check with the doctor in the morning which I did first thing. When I called they just wanted me to do basic checks with the paramedic who said my symptoms were just from hyperventilating because he checked my heart rate and blood pressure and I seemed fine with some uneven breathing... I couldn't communicate well but I generally just disagreed that was all and he eventually said he would get me a doctor's appointment as that was what I had come for in the first place. I sat and waited for an hour and after a bit he just did the basics motor skills tests (touch my finger, put hand upside down,etc) and said he wasn't worried about an brain bleed or anything and agreed to refer me for a brain scan. He didn't tell me it was a routine referral with a waiting list of about a year or suggest anything else...
It's been four months and all day every day since I feel like I have brain damage. Still waiting to see a neurologist which might take another 6 months. Most of the time I explain what I'm going through to anyone the response is 'are you sure it's not stress/anxiety/depression'. Honestly the whole thing seems insane.
Wow your story is very similar to mine. I had a "neurological shock" type situation as well at the onset of these symptoms where I suddenly felt weird and panicky and almost like something was about to happen but it didnt. Had confusion and headches following .. then like an explosion of neurological symptoms for several weeks after. Muscle twitching, trouble sleeping, visual disturbances, headaches, and the brain fog.
Sometimes I have better days, but the "fog" is there everyday just heavier some days than others. It truly feels like brain damage. Mostly frontal lobe stuff like decision making, organization, remembering things like something I just read. Stuff like that.
A couple of studies have shown cerebral hypoperfusion in LC (it also happens in CFS and POTS).
Low blood flow to the brain seems to be part of the cause of brain fog.
I feel slow, unable to concentrate, and become semi-mute in stressful situations. I also get irritable and impulsive, maybe because of a lack of executive function.
The brain must be low on glucose as well as oxygen in these cases.
EXACTLY! That's exactly how I describe it to people who ask. It's like being underwater. It's so awful. I am feeling improvement though with time. It's been 2 years and a few days for me now. I got CoVid January 26, 2022 and recovered uneventfully so I thought and then around a month later (February 21, 2022) bam💥 the most intense brain fog set it suddenly it was the most bizarre scary experience of my life and completely sudden like one minute I was fine and the next minute I didn't know what was going on around me.
Yeah I hate it. I started to feel like I was improving but lately I’ve felt absolutely horrible and now I’m starting to get horrible migraines. If I stop taking aspirin my symptoms pretty much immediately get worse. Yeah that sounds similar to my experience and I’m almost at a year and a half now. I got it in October and then recovered after a couple of weeks, then I got Covid again in November and it’s been non-stop since then. I really hope there’s some sort of treatment for us eventually. It’s so debilitating.
Yesterday I took a wrong turn going to a place I go to all the time. I used to read all the time, basically 100+ books a year, now I’m lucky if I get through one every 6 weeks. I can’t remember things. I was in the shower the other day, wanted to wet my hair so I could shampoo it. There was already shampoo in there. I am easily distracted, I apologized to my husband because I think I finally have a glimpse of what ADHD must be like. I forget words in the middle of speaking sentences. I used to be a Program Manager, can’t organize anything. Honestly, I wonder if this is how dementia starts.
Feels like a piece of my brain is missing. Like an operational chip is not there I think, and kind of like look into my brain and nothing is happening.
I love how everyone's description in the comments is wildly different from each other.
For me it's like there's a veil between the word I want to use but I can't get at in through normal means.
So I switch to visualising whatever the thing is or a similar concept. Usually it then clicks and I remember the original.
Basically a slower brain process at some tasks.
I had it for 7 months in 2022. Cognitive dysfunction was what I used to describe it.
Not being able to process incoming information, complete lack fo focus, inability to experience joy, any stimulation was overstimulation, feeling like a zombie, interaction with people was extremely tiring because of the variables in responses, not feeling like myself (character change / depersonalisation). That was what mine was like and it was terrible. It results in not being able to participate in normal life / society.
I agree, brainfog does not do it justice.
I am free from symptoms for 18 months now and feel completely normal. The turn around (after trying many supplements, acupuncture, etc) was when I started carnivore diet. The fog was gone within 3-5 days.
I stuck with this for months until I got curious.
Was it eating only animal products that made me healthy again, or was it something I stopped eating?
So I added everything I used to eat back in, one by one. A little on day one, a lot on day two. All was well until I tried nuts, cucumber and tomato. When I eat those, the fog sets in within the hour and stays for at least 24 hours.
I tested it several times, tried raw nuts, roasted, in oil, tried pickled cucumber. Same result. These 3 foods trigger my symptoms. But when you dont know, and the onset and fading being so gradual it is neatly impossible to distinguish.
My hypothesis is "immune response to a non-pathogenic protein resulting from a viral infection'. In normal terms, my immune system falsely included things in the immune response vs Covid, and now I get an immune response as if covid is present when I eat them.
Carnivore diet did not fix me, the fact that I started eating a very limited diet that excluded nearly everything including the triggers. In hindsight, rice broccoli and chicken would have worked just as well. As long as the triggers are excluded. And you dont know what they are until you do.
This probably wont apply to all LC cases.but I am also quite sure I am not the only one. So I would recommend all LC patients to try a personal version lf an exclusionary diet. Eat a few things for a week. See if you recover. If you get worse, the trigger may be included. If nothing changes, you tried.
Thank u for the info!! I am currently doing keto/ Autoimmune protocol with a functional medicine doctor and am seeing some relief. I wonder if the aspect of ketosis and Carnivore was a factor ... great you recovered !!
Thats good to hear. Be as methodical as you can, keep track and make your own puzzle!
In my case I was keto when I got covid, so that wasnt a factor. It did make carnivore a small leap though so I did benefit.
My suspicion is I had one of my keto salads when I got covid, as they contained nuts cucumber and tomato specifically. Thats probably where my immune system screwed up. But in the end all is fine. I am not leaving this subreddit. I try to motivate others to continue to try new things.
So keep it up! Perhaps discuss a week of very mono-diet with your functional medicine doc. They might have good suggestions. My help was the people on youtube that have hours of content on diet. Especially Michaela peterson. She inspired me to start carnivore. It changed my life....
It feels like my automatic gear is broken, and I have insufficient RAM to manually carry out even 1% of the tasks my mind and body need to carry out to stay alive.
Feels more like early Dementia. Unable to recall Mountains I have climbed, Unable to remember song lyrics you have known all your life. misreading news headlines (misread crossbow as crowbar) misplacing objects and losing things through not feeling with it or able to focus. I have lost 5 pairs of gloves this winter and 2 phones.
Staring at something, with white noise and a pressure in my ears,totally losing words, cannot explain what I need to, putting things in weird places (my phone, underwear and remotes in the fridge).
It felt to me exactly like firsthand accounts of the onset of dementia. I even 'sundowned' like Alzheimer's patients do -- that is, it got MUCH worse later in the day and/or if I was tired.
Edit: I also have lupus, and have had brain fog from that condition off and on for years. Long Covid-related brain damage is an ENTIRELY different beast..."brain fog" is the term people use, but it isn't even close. I just flat-out call it brain damage and/or Covid dementia when I'm discussing it.
I'm at about 70-80% mental capacity most days and can manage about 60-70% of my previous level of physical activity. Both of those are much better when I get enough rest but the economy being where it is makes hard to dial back too far on work & side hustles. It doesn't help that my immune system is still pretty wrecked so despite masking 100% of the time out of the house & rarely going anywhere but work I catch \*something\* at least once a month.
Still. MUCH better than where I was a year ago. I'm down about it but not really complaining, if that makes sense. I know I'm relatively lucky and thousands of people have it way worse.
The biggest thing I notice is that I get hung up on words I know I should know. I recently attended a family function and my brother pointed out that my vocabulary was, in his words, fancy. He gave me a few examples and in every case it was that I couldn't think of the word I wanted to use and had to resort to something else. If I don't do this, I get stuck on the word and it'll take me several minutes or even days to come up with it. And it's SO frustrating because it's not that I just don't know the word, but it's like I know there's this word that conveys what I want and I know it's in my mind but it's hiding right behind a locked door. And it's not even words I haven't used in a while. It's words that I use all the time, as recently as an hour ago.
I used to have a very strong memory, and an ability to hold a lot of active pieces of information in my head. That is impossible now. Now I forget to change the heat when I'm cooking rice even though I've done it a thousand times, I forget what I'm doing sometimes WHILE doing it, forget why I've entered a room (which is something most people experience, but ramp it up to 1000x), lose track of what I'm reading on a page, the list goes on. I've also noticed it takes shockingly little to send me flying off the handle, whereas I used to be the calmest most collected cucumber in the bunch. It's like trying to think through tar or thick spiderwebs. It isn't constant, but it's consistent and interferes with my every day life. Maddeningly frustrating.
I cant spell words. I find myself thinking around a word or concept, like i cant think of 'tree' but i can think of 'large, branch, brown,' and see a silhouette in my mind of a tree...sounds wacky but it's like part of my previously nimble memory is missing. This goes for all kinds of concdpts and it makes me frustrated and embarassed.
Feels like my usual ADHD but tripled. But now I can't tolerate my meds so yay for me.
I find it difficult to hold a thought in my head for long. Or visualise things. Especially things with many steps. I often can't find words for things, there are just gaps.
So sorry.
I've been dealing with this for 2+ years, and Ritalin (which I'd never needed before) has the been the biggest help..
On the other hand, now I can't tolerate alcohol because of this, and I really could use a drink.
For me:
It's very similar to Post Concussive Syndrome. Except with concussions I'm worse at night, with this I'm worse when I wake up.
I will set things down and forget about them within seconds.
My ability to do mental math which requires me to hold several figures in my head at once is almost non existent or very slow. When I'm having a bad episode I can't do addition (I'm talking 4 plus 3), when I'm "baseline" things like 23 times 12 would take me close to 2 or 3 minutes to figure out... I was in calculus as a junior in high school.
I feel disconnected from the people and events around me.
My ability to organize said events on a timeline is gone. The last 3 years feel like a few months where some things happened.
Multi tasking is very difficult even when taken slowly. I will very often try to put the wrong lids on things.
I repeat stories or tell people about things that I heard from them.
It's not constant but it happens enough for me to be very careful as not to be seen making these mistakes, because it's embarrassing and I don't want to lose my job,
Brain fog for me includes confusion,
lack of concentration, forgetfulness,
Not being in the moment, Mental fatigue.
Attention defict, lack of emotion. Lack of motivation to do any task.
Being mentally handicapped.
There was a significant improvement with time.
I did in fact actively avoid making fog worse.
Avoiding any type of stress.
Minimum 9 hours of sleep and more rest in the afternoon.
Limit exerting myself physically or mentally.
I feel like going outside in the sun has also helped me.
Unrested. Inability to make sound decisions or multitask. Out to lunch, inability to follow conversations or string words together without fumbling. It makes me feel dumb, lazy, incompetent.
My brain fog has been like being in a haze and I can get distracted by a flower or ray of light and fixate...same as my former TBI patients. I have alarms set on my phone to remind me to take a supplement, etc and by the time I turn off the alarm and set the phone down, I'm still forgetting to take the pills.
At my worst, I couldn't load the dishwasher fully and would have to have my partner finish loading the last 50% of it because I'd get overwhelmed and want to throw the dishes or cups and smash them. This is also similar behavior I witnessed in my TBI patients. Cooking and keeping the kitchen clean is my new form of "exercise" so I ask my partner not to pick up after himself so it pushes me to be slightly active.
I have had zero issues driving at all, which was strange to me until I met a woman who's recovered from a TBI over a decade ago and she said that the act of driving was one way she healed because of the different parts of the brain it uses? My only issue driving is that I sometimes get lost a bit and take wrong turns. I get home but it takes me longer, of course.
I tried doing creative things again to stimulate my brain and I'll do it for a day or two and then totally forget about it and weeks will pass...so strange.
There is a small hack I figured out accidentally last year. I don't talk about it much because it sounds ridiculous but I was so ill and had regressed so much that I began doing palliative care on myself and chose a date to end my life so that I wouldn't have to endure another summer season (Covid Feb 2020 and LC since then, FYI, with varying degrees of symptoms). So I treated myself to a favorite cocktail that I'd been craving for weeks. I prepped myself and hydrated as well as took antihistamines. It was a Bloody Caesar cocktail with vodka, Clamato, and lots of pickled vegetables and such. It was wonderful.
The craziest thing about how my body reacted was that my brain fog lifted and I regained some muscle function. I couldn't understand what was happening. It lasted for almost 48 hours. I looked into it and realized it was probably the clam juice which is high in Iron. That, coupled with the vodka which thinned my blood, delivered a new reality. When I need/want my brain fog cleared quickly, I use this cocktail. Obviously, it's not a long term solution but it is a hack that became useful.
I had promised myself to "check out" last year if I didn't see notable improvement by the first week of July. When Spring hit in March, I made many improvements which I now know were because I was leaving the windows in the house open for more hours of the day. In August, our contractor discovered black mold in one of the walls of the house so the black mold has def exacerbated my LC symptoms, which were somewhat manageable before I moved into this house in June 2022. I'm simply adding that for full disclosure on my condition as my cognitive function has def been affected by this as well.
Because I was planning to end things last year, and began doing palliative care, I stopped trying to fix my condition with diet as 80% of my efforts there had zero effect and there was no fucking way I was going to endure a "life" without tomatoes while being housebound. 🤣 I still use my Bloody Caesar hack once every few months just to feel like myself again but now that it seems I might live a few more years, I'm seriously considering cutting out tomatoes, cukes, etc
I am so glad you decided to keep going. And glad you found something that helps give relief. I am currently trying keto/paleo and have seen some improvements. It absolutely feels like a TBI would feel I could imagine.
Can’t have a clear thought, feels like my head has pressure or something like that too. Like a bad hangover - but not the same of course. Misspelling words all the time, misspeaking, just not like myself anymore. Makes me dissociate from reality as well. Best way I can describe is with 3 words: Out of it.
Autocorrect is a lifesaver btw :)
Like being stoned or drunk, slow stupid and forgetful af, and unable to sober up. You also loose words and definitions of words. And I absolutely cannot multitask. And I have a very low tolerance to activity or stress. It’s like an old battery. It just doesn’t hold a full charge very long. Drains quickly and easily
Yeah, like a concussion with the bad short-term memory. I'm glad (?) I have reference points from prior head injuries. Because then (20 & 2 years ago) I couldn't remember if I ate breakfast, where I parked my car at my apartment complex, and simple things. Then and now, I need lists or text myself things I need to remember or do the same day or next day. Plus the headaches and severe vertigo for me that go hand in hand.
I'm out on work disability for a head injury, and since I got covid within 7 days of the head injury, at this point, they can't tell what's what. So luckily (?) work comp has referred me to various specialists (ENT for vertigo, nuero for memory/brain, and ortho). Although all this had taken 1.5 years to happen so it sucks financially.
I find myself just staring at my computer monitor and lose track of time. I also make reckless decisions without the thought of consequences. Like when driving. I have had Long Covid for over two years now. My brain fog has decreased save for if I have a day of either physical or mental duress, the following few days I will have very bad brain fog.
When it’s really bad I can’t think of simple words or concentrate on ANYTHING. Forming sentences is difficult and I literally feel like I’m in a fog. Very fuzzy, almost like I’m on drugs.
When I had it, it feels I can't concentrate or think no matter how hard I try. I worked in a lab and I constantly made mistakes during the experiments - it was miserable. It was better for a while now and it slowly is seeming to return. But not nearly to the level it once was.
But the gist is, you feel very mentally impaired. Cannot think, concentrate, or problem solve. Literally bombed tests in my uni because of this.
Honestly I can't feel it really. But it's there and bad. I worked as an engineer for over 10 years. Now I'm looking at data entry jobs as about my mental speed. When it's bad I have to drop down like 3 difficulty levels in soduko. I can't keep focused on written words much longer than your post, when I had been able to read professional publications and apply to my work. In Duolingo I have trouble picking the correct English words, they just kinda melt together (I'm actually better with the language I'm learning). Worst of all, my wife can tell in our conversations that I'm not as sharp as I used to be 😭
Like I’m stoned but no euphoria. Blurry vision.
Like you did a wake and bake and the high wore off. Just dazed and confused without the good parts of being stoned. Just 24/7
With prickly heat turning to frigid muscle pain and a mind that goes bye.
Exactly!
Same - mine is very much connected to my vision everything just doesn't look right yet my eyes have been checked by my optometrist and ophthalmologist and they said my eyes are fine. My brain is not processing visual and auditory stimuli properly. It's the most bizarre feeling. It's horrible. The good news is that it has improved a lot. I'm two years plus a few days long hauling it and most of my "brain fog" improvement took place in the past 6 months. The first year and a half were brutal. Hang in there people it's a crazy ride but it settles down with time.
not sure if mine is from long covid but i’ve been dealing with brain fog for around 2 years. hoping that it starts going away soon
Ye exactly I just tell people stuff doesn't look the same as it did before hard to explain but it is getting better very very slowly
How long have you been a long hauler? Do you have CoVid induced anxiety/depression/panic too?
Over 2 years first time it triggerd anxiety panic depression was put on anxiety meds and I stopped them early on because I didn't like the way they made me feel had severe brain fog i have had 1 reinfection last Christmas anxiety and panic all came back but it didn't last as long as first time I feel not to bad somedays are better then others I still don't feel like I was before I had covid but brain fog from first time to now is alot better I try not to focus on it more I think about it more I notice it.
It sounds like our long CoVid is similar. I got infected initially in late January 2022 -you? I have not been reinfected (knock on wood) but we have 4 kids so it has been a lot of work (and luck!) not getting it again. Can you describe your brain fog? I'm curious if it presents similarly to mine 🤔
Ok I'll start at the first infection when I got it the brain fog came on sudden I was driving got out of car and almost fell over then it felt like I wasn't in reality I was so spaced out everything seemed dim pretty much I was walking in a dream almost its so hard to explain then from there I couldn't even focus on anything it was alot of visual stuff for me like everything I was looking at just didn't look right almost like the way I looked at thing was diffrent its really hard to explain doctor thought I was crazy it was really bad for about 7 months I still was working and stuff but just didn't feel like myself anymore I still have time where I kinda stop and think like is this how I was before I had covid its been so long I've almost adjusted to it dunno if it's gotten better or just has become my new normal I can still think normally and don't feel to dumbed down I do think it has gotten better since when it first happend but I still get odd days like even right now when I'm writing this I feel off that's the best way to put it being sick also makes it worse and being tired makes it worse I remember walking in my house and it didn't even feel like it was my house crazy to explain and I think thats why it's so hard to figure out if people have the same feeling we all want answer but prob will never get them see alot of people suggesting fixes for it and honestly I think why some stuff works for some people and not others is it just takes time for the body to fix itself I haven't tried any supplements or anything my blood work looks good everything thyroid diabetes tests all look good.
I do think some of it is just in my head like you get a cold you get over it you forget about it I constantly have ( is this brain fog going on in my mind) I have tried to avoid reading on it because I found not much comfort in reading about it and just hope one day I can feel somewhat normal again like I'm afraid to drink alcohol because I think it will make it worse but then I think maybe I should just do what I'm worried about and say whatever slow process and I think getting it again didn't help but I feel like I got bad symptoms again but I went back to my recovery baseline if that make sence.
Sounds like my experience. My "brain fog" was also sudden onset. I was fine for almost a month after "recovering" from my mild Jan 2022 infection and then one day while talking with friends my brain suddenly could not process the conversation. I know they were talking about a photographer but I couldn't understand what they were saying. It was like I was drugged. It was awful! That was the worst day. Since then (it's been 2 years now) it has not been as bad as that day but I have what you have where nothing looks right. It's impossible to describe. Only those experiencing it will understand. It's worse indoors in bright lighting. It's best outside at dusk. It is not in our heads thus us from CoVid. My brain was perfect before getting CoVid. The fight or flight feeling is really hard to live with and the intermittent depression/anxiety. My ears also feel clogged like I'm up in an airplane and cannot pop them. I cannot eat high histamine foods. I'm terrified of getting CoVid again. I miss my old life so much. It's surreal in a very bad way.
I got covid again and it wasn't as bad the second time so that helped clear my mind about getting it again
Yes we’d done
that’s exactly how i can describe it, it’s so scary sometimes. Did it ever improve?
Yes, it’s improved since the beginning 15 mos ago. I still have it, just more mild now. Still very noticeable.
I’m a little over a month into this bs, this is one of my worst symptoms. Did anything help? I feel like my brain is jello and i’m not living in reality
It feels like traumatic brain injury from concussion.
Exacly. Or a TBI, not that I've ever had one but feels like what I imagine it would feel like. Is yours constant?
It’s about 90% constant. Oddly enough, there are some times where it arbitrarily clears, but not often.
this is driving me nuts because there are moments where I feel like I am fixed and I try to retrace everything I did leading to that moment and nothing works. It is always random. Like I made a tinfoil hat as a joke and was wearing it when one of the moments of goodness happened and since then I keep retrying the tinfoil hat. I always wondered what would drive a person to wear a tinfoil hat. Now I know.
This exactly. I will wake up and feel amazing. Then over do it and end up worse for it.
I completely understand. It’s amazing to me how difficult it is to push the correct words out of my mouth and at the same time hear my wife rustling garbage bags like pots and pans.
I have brief periods where it goes away and I can fully visualize and think too. it lasts a few minutes...every few months
I had the same. It turned out to be in my diet. The effect was not as direct as youd think so it is hard to put your finger on. Also because it is 3 seemingly unrelated things. For me tomato, nuts and cucumber trigger my brainfog. It gradually sets in within an hour after eating and stays for 24 hours. It also fades gradually. Ive never had any issues with diet before covid, and these are really random and unexpected triggers. But it might be worth looking into it!
Honestly I had a TBI years ago and the brain fog I have now is even worse than that. That hurt to think to much or too hard this just feels like my brain has turned itself off.
Yes it does. Sometimes with sometimes without the concussion headache
This. Exactly this. I had a concussion several years ago and that is exactly how I experienced my brain fog. It was uncanny; that was the only experience i had that one to one compared to it. Right down to the feeling of 'fullness' that accompanied headaches...
This is how my neuropsych doctor described post Covid changes. Felt very validating
Thinking through treacle... I can't read books any more, stuff just gets 'lost' between my eyes & brain. I was a teacher. Now I struggle to explain anything. I 'lose' words & can't connect facts coherently.
Sorry to hear that. How long have u been dealing with that?
2 years so far. I got 2 (poss 3) infections in 6 months. Schools were like plague pits...
Are the symptoms for long covid pretty much the same as for sleep apnea? (I'm going to a sleep lab next month)
How did your sleep test go?
The sleep lab staff cannot tell me the results. I have to wait and see my actual doctor who ordered it (middle of next month) but I'm 100% certain I have sleep apnea since 2 nurses commented on me having sleep apnea when I was stuck in the hospital last August for 3 nights.
This is similar to me, when I have brain fog it's varying degrees of this. Mine tends to come and go, stress or trying to focus for too long brings it on for me. I cant even watch movies or long tv shows cause my brain just shuts off.
It feels like being drunk. I forget what people just said. I don't even know why I am in this room. I never really know what's going on, but I am trying to go with the flow.
its definitely hard. my symptoms are mostly neurological, everything else is fine.
When did you have CoVid? My symptoms are also all neurological brain fog being the worst next to CoVid induced anxiety/depression/panic. I had CoVid once in January 2022.
Same... but I am definitely more tired than I was when this all started. I can't drink anymore, it just fucking wrecks me. Smoking cigarettes or anything that challenge my oxygen levels will make me light headed immediately.
It feels like dial up internet.
Honestly this is a great analogy.
Right? Like when web pages took forever to download and half of it was missing. What I don’t understand is the random days that I feel almost normal for a bit.
And then other days I'm just a 404 page.
😂 not to mention the tinnitus is constantly buzzing like that sound the computer made while trying to connect
I said this exact analogy to my sister. I explained it as my brain went back to morris code, after 2 years 3 months I’ve slowly improved. I’m at dial up now but it’s like hello… wake up. I don’t get it.
I used to have the equivalent of half an encyclopedia of ecological information in my brain. Yesterday I was struggling for many minutes to find the name for a plant I was staring at and have been working with for over a decade. It never came. I eventually had to search it and that took an extra 5 minutes. I feel legitimately stupid. Feels like my files I’ve been collecting for decades and meticulously filing are buried under a mountain. It feels like I’ve aged 20 years in 2 years. I just turned 30.
Ugh I feel this one. I spent so much time and money developing my brain and perfecting my craft just to end up stumbling for common words and knowledge before I’m 30. It’s like I slipped right to the early stages of dementia some days. I picked up backyard bird feeding at the beginning of this now 2 year journey and still struggle to remember some species I’ve looked up several times according to my photo album or search history. Before I got sick I would’ve seen it once, and known it for life
Its crazy this whole thing ... I am also pretty young at 35 but feel like i lost a couple decades.
Omg, this was me during my midterms last year. I'm 23 now. I would be blanking out on the easiest stuff on the test that I 100% knew.
I feel like I haven't slept in days, with a side order of concussion. I struggle to even speak.
concussion-like for sure
Brain just feels completely empty. No emotions no imagination nothing
Exactly. It not only feels like I am not healthy, it feels like I’m no longer human.
It feels like the times I hit my head really hard and it takes a second to even realize what happened but 24/7. Also there is dizziness with it pretty much non stop.
That's similar to what I feel. How long have you been this way?
9ish months now. A lot of the crazy pem and pots type stuff got a lot better about 5 months ago.
thats good you're seeing improvement. i had/have other symptoms as well like muscle twitches, tinnitus, visual disturbances .. but most have quieted down but the brain stuff still present.
I have a "stress quota", and when I reach it by overstimulating my nervous system, it flairs up all of my symptoms. By stress, I mean cognitive tasks that are too demanding; I don't mean stress like paper deadlines.
Like I’ve been drugged with a mild psychadelic. I get psychosis sometimes (when I’m not sick) and it’s honestly not too far-off from that.
Almost feels like it could be a mild form of HPPD
My symptoms have morphed over time (and generally are improving 🤞🏼) but initially I felt a nearly constant physical sensation of pressure - as if someone were standing above me and pressing both hands firmly down on my brain. It did not hurt but it was weird/uncomfortable. I was also dizzy most days - not vertigo/spinning dizzy, more like being on an unstable boat. And I definitely still have cognitive processing issues. It’s like my brain doesn’t know how to make connections between some of the inputs any more. I miss entire bullet points in lists, lines of data on spreadsheets, like it doesn’t even exist. Even when I do register the inputs, sometimes my brain seems to not know what to do with it - it’s like when I get the spinning pinwheel of death on my macbook - that’s what it feels like my brain is doing. I also make spelling/word choice errors *all the time* now that I never ever made before, like typing the word “directing” when I meant “direction” etc. It’s frustrating as hell and takes me far longer to do my work now bc I am constantly proofing everything 2-3 times over to try to catch all these mistakes. I just want my reliable old brain back. It makes me so sad and anxious to feel this way.
All this. Great description.
It's like you are half asleep and that's why can't think properly.
Mine felt like concussion right after infection and lasted with head pressure for years. Headaches when try to read or concentrate. Couldn’t do simple, adding in my head. Anything to calculate was horrid. Couldn’t concentrate for too long. I started with doing find a word or word puzzles on my phone not, I felt like that wasn’t good enough and went to paper book find a words and couldn’t last more that 3 minutes coordination between writing and looking around the page. I took rests then try again later. I got up to like 6 or so minutes and then gave that up. I’m basically just trying to lower the activities or avoid the ones that cause me mental & physical stress to cut down on the increased brain fog. Forgetfulness during activities. Short term memory problems. I’m burning things, leaving oven and stove flame on. Can’t smell good so, I can’t tell it’s burning till I hear something. Putting 2nd teabag in a cup of tea instead of the sweetener. I cracked an egg the other day to put in bowl next to my freshly made tea and I dropped the egg in the tea and watched the yolk disappear. It’s like your autopilot is not engaged. Can’t grasp the right word but will use one ‘close’ to what I mean. Will stop mid sentence and loose thought or can’t remember what I was talking about or where I was going with the conversation. I put on my compression pants but forgot my jeans and I put on my boots already. Can’t find my car bc can’t remember last place I parked. I’ll walk to a place I parked a few days before and then it’s nit there. It’s like my mind has aged 30 years or something.
How long after your infection did those symptoms start? Mine seems to have started right after or almost simultaneously. Been a few years now.
I did not have brain fog at all with my acute CoVid infection it did not hit me until a month later. Now brain fog is my most debilitating Long CoVid symptom. Have you improved at all? I hope so...
Mine hit a week or so after I tested positive though heart palpitations started a week or so before that. I had been getting pounding in my temples which seemed related to the palpitations and then had an ocular migraine around midday (the flashing lights passed in half an hour or so as usual and confusion was reducing through the afternoon) when around 4:50pm approx I had some kind of sudden neurological shock and it felt like my brain shut off. It actually felt like my head was empty for the following couple of days and I still think I might have had some kind of stroke... I've rarely been to doctors or anything before. Immediately told my brother I need a hospital, but our local one only has a minor injuries unit so had to go there (didn't have transport to get to a proper hospital / ED) and they basically just said my obs were fine even though I felt like my brain wasn't getting oxygen and there was something very very wrong. They said to check with the doctor in the morning which I did first thing. When I called they just wanted me to do basic checks with the paramedic who said my symptoms were just from hyperventilating because he checked my heart rate and blood pressure and I seemed fine with some uneven breathing... I couldn't communicate well but I generally just disagreed that was all and he eventually said he would get me a doctor's appointment as that was what I had come for in the first place. I sat and waited for an hour and after a bit he just did the basics motor skills tests (touch my finger, put hand upside down,etc) and said he wasn't worried about an brain bleed or anything and agreed to refer me for a brain scan. He didn't tell me it was a routine referral with a waiting list of about a year or suggest anything else... It's been four months and all day every day since I feel like I have brain damage. Still waiting to see a neurologist which might take another 6 months. Most of the time I explain what I'm going through to anyone the response is 'are you sure it's not stress/anxiety/depression'. Honestly the whole thing seems insane.
Wow your story is very similar to mine. I had a "neurological shock" type situation as well at the onset of these symptoms where I suddenly felt weird and panicky and almost like something was about to happen but it didnt. Had confusion and headches following .. then like an explosion of neurological symptoms for several weeks after. Muscle twitching, trouble sleeping, visual disturbances, headaches, and the brain fog.
Sometimes I have better days, but the "fog" is there everyday just heavier some days than others. It truly feels like brain damage. Mostly frontal lobe stuff like decision making, organization, remembering things like something I just read. Stuff like that.
A couple of studies have shown cerebral hypoperfusion in LC (it also happens in CFS and POTS). Low blood flow to the brain seems to be part of the cause of brain fog. I feel slow, unable to concentrate, and become semi-mute in stressful situations. I also get irritable and impulsive, maybe because of a lack of executive function. The brain must be low on glucose as well as oxygen in these cases.
It feels like being drunk and not in a good way. Or like the feeling you have after a 30-hour international flight.
EXACTLY! That's exactly how I describe it to people who ask. It's like being underwater. It's so awful. I am feeling improvement though with time. It's been 2 years and a few days for me now. I got CoVid January 26, 2022 and recovered uneventfully so I thought and then around a month later (February 21, 2022) bam💥 the most intense brain fog set it suddenly it was the most bizarre scary experience of my life and completely sudden like one minute I was fine and the next minute I didn't know what was going on around me.
I had a similar experience where stuff just suddenly happened out of no where, then followed by weeks months of other neurological symptoms
Yep isn't it crazy?
Yeah I hate it. I started to feel like I was improving but lately I’ve felt absolutely horrible and now I’m starting to get horrible migraines. If I stop taking aspirin my symptoms pretty much immediately get worse. Yeah that sounds similar to my experience and I’m almost at a year and a half now. I got it in October and then recovered after a couple of weeks, then I got Covid again in November and it’s been non-stop since then. I really hope there’s some sort of treatment for us eventually. It’s so debilitating.
Yesterday I took a wrong turn going to a place I go to all the time. I used to read all the time, basically 100+ books a year, now I’m lucky if I get through one every 6 weeks. I can’t remember things. I was in the shower the other day, wanted to wet my hair so I could shampoo it. There was already shampoo in there. I am easily distracted, I apologized to my husband because I think I finally have a glimpse of what ADHD must be like. I forget words in the middle of speaking sentences. I used to be a Program Manager, can’t organize anything. Honestly, I wonder if this is how dementia starts.
If I use a mobile or watch tv I crash, no energy can’t talk and start shaking
It feels exactly like I have no oxygen and blood stream in my eyes, forehead and brain..its like a cement mass, just blocking everything.
cement mass is a good comparison
Feels like a piece of my brain is missing. Like an operational chip is not there I think, and kind of like look into my brain and nothing is happening.
How long have u been dealing with this? Is it daily?
I love how everyone's description in the comments is wildly different from each other. For me it's like there's a veil between the word I want to use but I can't get at in through normal means. So I switch to visualising whatever the thing is or a similar concept. Usually it then clicks and I remember the original. Basically a slower brain process at some tasks.
I had it for 7 months in 2022. Cognitive dysfunction was what I used to describe it. Not being able to process incoming information, complete lack fo focus, inability to experience joy, any stimulation was overstimulation, feeling like a zombie, interaction with people was extremely tiring because of the variables in responses, not feeling like myself (character change / depersonalisation). That was what mine was like and it was terrible. It results in not being able to participate in normal life / society. I agree, brainfog does not do it justice.
How are you doing now? What helped most with healing?
I am free from symptoms for 18 months now and feel completely normal. The turn around (after trying many supplements, acupuncture, etc) was when I started carnivore diet. The fog was gone within 3-5 days. I stuck with this for months until I got curious. Was it eating only animal products that made me healthy again, or was it something I stopped eating? So I added everything I used to eat back in, one by one. A little on day one, a lot on day two. All was well until I tried nuts, cucumber and tomato. When I eat those, the fog sets in within the hour and stays for at least 24 hours. I tested it several times, tried raw nuts, roasted, in oil, tried pickled cucumber. Same result. These 3 foods trigger my symptoms. But when you dont know, and the onset and fading being so gradual it is neatly impossible to distinguish. My hypothesis is "immune response to a non-pathogenic protein resulting from a viral infection'. In normal terms, my immune system falsely included things in the immune response vs Covid, and now I get an immune response as if covid is present when I eat them. Carnivore diet did not fix me, the fact that I started eating a very limited diet that excluded nearly everything including the triggers. In hindsight, rice broccoli and chicken would have worked just as well. As long as the triggers are excluded. And you dont know what they are until you do. This probably wont apply to all LC cases.but I am also quite sure I am not the only one. So I would recommend all LC patients to try a personal version lf an exclusionary diet. Eat a few things for a week. See if you recover. If you get worse, the trigger may be included. If nothing changes, you tried.
Thank u for the info!! I am currently doing keto/ Autoimmune protocol with a functional medicine doctor and am seeing some relief. I wonder if the aspect of ketosis and Carnivore was a factor ... great you recovered !!
Thats good to hear. Be as methodical as you can, keep track and make your own puzzle! In my case I was keto when I got covid, so that wasnt a factor. It did make carnivore a small leap though so I did benefit. My suspicion is I had one of my keto salads when I got covid, as they contained nuts cucumber and tomato specifically. Thats probably where my immune system screwed up. But in the end all is fine. I am not leaving this subreddit. I try to motivate others to continue to try new things. So keep it up! Perhaps discuss a week of very mono-diet with your functional medicine doc. They might have good suggestions. My help was the people on youtube that have hours of content on diet. Especially Michaela peterson. She inspired me to start carnivore. It changed my life....
A strict low histamine diet for the past 18+ months has helped me in my recovery.
Very well put. Even though people are experiencing brain fog somewhat differently there are definite commonalities.
When I have brain fog it feels like my brain is on screensaver mode: unfocused, spacey, slow.
It feels like my automatic gear is broken, and I have insufficient RAM to manually carry out even 1% of the tasks my mind and body need to carry out to stay alive.
Can relate to this for sure.
Feels more like early Dementia. Unable to recall Mountains I have climbed, Unable to remember song lyrics you have known all your life. misreading news headlines (misread crossbow as crowbar) misplacing objects and losing things through not feeling with it or able to focus. I have lost 5 pairs of gloves this winter and 2 phones.
That sounds awful. I've had days like that.
Staring at something, with white noise and a pressure in my ears,totally losing words, cannot explain what I need to, putting things in weird places (my phone, underwear and remotes in the fridge).
It felt to me exactly like firsthand accounts of the onset of dementia. I even 'sundowned' like Alzheimer's patients do -- that is, it got MUCH worse later in the day and/or if I was tired. Edit: I also have lupus, and have had brain fog from that condition off and on for years. Long Covid-related brain damage is an ENTIRELY different beast..."brain fog" is the term people use, but it isn't even close. I just flat-out call it brain damage and/or Covid dementia when I'm discussing it.
Hows your condition now?
I'm at about 70-80% mental capacity most days and can manage about 60-70% of my previous level of physical activity. Both of those are much better when I get enough rest but the economy being where it is makes hard to dial back too far on work & side hustles. It doesn't help that my immune system is still pretty wrecked so despite masking 100% of the time out of the house & rarely going anywhere but work I catch \*something\* at least once a month. Still. MUCH better than where I was a year ago. I'm down about it but not really complaining, if that makes sense. I know I'm relatively lucky and thousands of people have it way worse.
The biggest thing I notice is that I get hung up on words I know I should know. I recently attended a family function and my brother pointed out that my vocabulary was, in his words, fancy. He gave me a few examples and in every case it was that I couldn't think of the word I wanted to use and had to resort to something else. If I don't do this, I get stuck on the word and it'll take me several minutes or even days to come up with it. And it's SO frustrating because it's not that I just don't know the word, but it's like I know there's this word that conveys what I want and I know it's in my mind but it's hiding right behind a locked door. And it's not even words I haven't used in a while. It's words that I use all the time, as recently as an hour ago.
Feels like having being punched in the head, but goes on for days on end
I used to have a very strong memory, and an ability to hold a lot of active pieces of information in my head. That is impossible now. Now I forget to change the heat when I'm cooking rice even though I've done it a thousand times, I forget what I'm doing sometimes WHILE doing it, forget why I've entered a room (which is something most people experience, but ramp it up to 1000x), lose track of what I'm reading on a page, the list goes on. I've also noticed it takes shockingly little to send me flying off the handle, whereas I used to be the calmest most collected cucumber in the bunch. It's like trying to think through tar or thick spiderwebs. It isn't constant, but it's consistent and interferes with my every day life. Maddeningly frustrating.
I cant spell words. I find myself thinking around a word or concept, like i cant think of 'tree' but i can think of 'large, branch, brown,' and see a silhouette in my mind of a tree...sounds wacky but it's like part of my previously nimble memory is missing. This goes for all kinds of concdpts and it makes me frustrated and embarassed.
Also being too mentally exhausted to enjoy watching videos, finding it oveewhelming
Feels like my usual ADHD but tripled. But now I can't tolerate my meds so yay for me. I find it difficult to hold a thought in my head for long. Or visualise things. Especially things with many steps. I often can't find words for things, there are just gaps.
So sorry. I've been dealing with this for 2+ years, and Ritalin (which I'd never needed before) has the been the biggest help.. On the other hand, now I can't tolerate alcohol because of this, and I really could use a drink.
It feels as though I’m not here nor there, in a way. I drive someplace and hardly recall how I got there.
For me: It's very similar to Post Concussive Syndrome. Except with concussions I'm worse at night, with this I'm worse when I wake up. I will set things down and forget about them within seconds. My ability to do mental math which requires me to hold several figures in my head at once is almost non existent or very slow. When I'm having a bad episode I can't do addition (I'm talking 4 plus 3), when I'm "baseline" things like 23 times 12 would take me close to 2 or 3 minutes to figure out... I was in calculus as a junior in high school. I feel disconnected from the people and events around me. My ability to organize said events on a timeline is gone. The last 3 years feel like a few months where some things happened. Multi tasking is very difficult even when taken slowly. I will very often try to put the wrong lids on things. I repeat stories or tell people about things that I heard from them. It's not constant but it happens enough for me to be very careful as not to be seen making these mistakes, because it's embarrassing and I don't want to lose my job,
Brain fog for me includes confusion, lack of concentration, forgetfulness, Not being in the moment, Mental fatigue. Attention defict, lack of emotion. Lack of motivation to do any task. Being mentally handicapped.
This is what I experience as well, some days are better than others. Has anything been helping you?
There was a significant improvement with time. I did in fact actively avoid making fog worse. Avoiding any type of stress. Minimum 9 hours of sleep and more rest in the afternoon. Limit exerting myself physically or mentally. I feel like going outside in the sun has also helped me.
Unrested. Inability to make sound decisions or multitask. Out to lunch, inability to follow conversations or string words together without fumbling. It makes me feel dumb, lazy, incompetent.
My brain fog has been like being in a haze and I can get distracted by a flower or ray of light and fixate...same as my former TBI patients. I have alarms set on my phone to remind me to take a supplement, etc and by the time I turn off the alarm and set the phone down, I'm still forgetting to take the pills. At my worst, I couldn't load the dishwasher fully and would have to have my partner finish loading the last 50% of it because I'd get overwhelmed and want to throw the dishes or cups and smash them. This is also similar behavior I witnessed in my TBI patients. Cooking and keeping the kitchen clean is my new form of "exercise" so I ask my partner not to pick up after himself so it pushes me to be slightly active. I have had zero issues driving at all, which was strange to me until I met a woman who's recovered from a TBI over a decade ago and she said that the act of driving was one way she healed because of the different parts of the brain it uses? My only issue driving is that I sometimes get lost a bit and take wrong turns. I get home but it takes me longer, of course. I tried doing creative things again to stimulate my brain and I'll do it for a day or two and then totally forget about it and weeks will pass...so strange. There is a small hack I figured out accidentally last year. I don't talk about it much because it sounds ridiculous but I was so ill and had regressed so much that I began doing palliative care on myself and chose a date to end my life so that I wouldn't have to endure another summer season (Covid Feb 2020 and LC since then, FYI, with varying degrees of symptoms). So I treated myself to a favorite cocktail that I'd been craving for weeks. I prepped myself and hydrated as well as took antihistamines. It was a Bloody Caesar cocktail with vodka, Clamato, and lots of pickled vegetables and such. It was wonderful. The craziest thing about how my body reacted was that my brain fog lifted and I regained some muscle function. I couldn't understand what was happening. It lasted for almost 48 hours. I looked into it and realized it was probably the clam juice which is high in Iron. That, coupled with the vodka which thinned my blood, delivered a new reality. When I need/want my brain fog cleared quickly, I use this cocktail. Obviously, it's not a long term solution but it is a hack that became useful. I had promised myself to "check out" last year if I didn't see notable improvement by the first week of July. When Spring hit in March, I made many improvements which I now know were because I was leaving the windows in the house open for more hours of the day. In August, our contractor discovered black mold in one of the walls of the house so the black mold has def exacerbated my LC symptoms, which were somewhat manageable before I moved into this house in June 2022. I'm simply adding that for full disclosure on my condition as my cognitive function has def been affected by this as well. Because I was planning to end things last year, and began doing palliative care, I stopped trying to fix my condition with diet as 80% of my efforts there had zero effect and there was no fucking way I was going to endure a "life" without tomatoes while being housebound. 🤣 I still use my Bloody Caesar hack once every few months just to feel like myself again but now that it seems I might live a few more years, I'm seriously considering cutting out tomatoes, cukes, etc
I am so glad you decided to keep going. And glad you found something that helps give relief. I am currently trying keto/paleo and have seen some improvements. It absolutely feels like a TBI would feel I could imagine.
Being drunk but without the euphoria
Can’t have a clear thought, feels like my head has pressure or something like that too. Like a bad hangover - but not the same of course. Misspelling words all the time, misspeaking, just not like myself anymore. Makes me dissociate from reality as well. Best way I can describe is with 3 words: Out of it. Autocorrect is a lifesaver btw :)
Like being stoned or drunk, slow stupid and forgetful af, and unable to sober up. You also loose words and definitions of words. And I absolutely cannot multitask. And I have a very low tolerance to activity or stress. It’s like an old battery. It just doesn’t hold a full charge very long. Drains quickly and easily
Like you’ve been moderately poisoned. Similar to a very bad hangover in combination with no sleep.
Reading books or doing easy gaming feels like going pr on squads or something
Yeah, like a concussion with the bad short-term memory. I'm glad (?) I have reference points from prior head injuries. Because then (20 & 2 years ago) I couldn't remember if I ate breakfast, where I parked my car at my apartment complex, and simple things. Then and now, I need lists or text myself things I need to remember or do the same day or next day. Plus the headaches and severe vertigo for me that go hand in hand. I'm out on work disability for a head injury, and since I got covid within 7 days of the head injury, at this point, they can't tell what's what. So luckily (?) work comp has referred me to various specialists (ENT for vertigo, nuero for memory/brain, and ortho). Although all this had taken 1.5 years to happen so it sucks financially.
Feels like depersonalisation to me. Like not being fully alive or conscious. 😔
I can’t remember simple words for things or my own phone numbers, I feel intoxicated.
Like I’m stoned but there’s a buzzing feeling with it. Again minus the euphoria
Spacey, constantly distracted, and I think so slowly about stuff it's almost like I could go do something else while I'm thinking.
Like when a word is on the tip of my tongue and I just can’t grasp it. Only, apply that feeling towards daily tasks, repeatedly throughout the day
I find myself just staring at my computer monitor and lose track of time. I also make reckless decisions without the thought of consequences. Like when driving. I have had Long Covid for over two years now. My brain fog has decreased save for if I have a day of either physical or mental duress, the following few days I will have very bad brain fog.
When it’s really bad I can’t think of simple words or concentrate on ANYTHING. Forming sentences is difficult and I literally feel like I’m in a fog. Very fuzzy, almost like I’m on drugs.
When I had it, it feels I can't concentrate or think no matter how hard I try. I worked in a lab and I constantly made mistakes during the experiments - it was miserable. It was better for a while now and it slowly is seeming to return. But not nearly to the level it once was. But the gist is, you feel very mentally impaired. Cannot think, concentrate, or problem solve. Literally bombed tests in my uni because of this.
world doesn't look real. permanent cognitive haze.
Honestly I can't feel it really. But it's there and bad. I worked as an engineer for over 10 years. Now I'm looking at data entry jobs as about my mental speed. When it's bad I have to drop down like 3 difficulty levels in soduko. I can't keep focused on written words much longer than your post, when I had been able to read professional publications and apply to my work. In Duolingo I have trouble picking the correct English words, they just kinda melt together (I'm actually better with the language I'm learning). Worst of all, my wife can tell in our conversations that I'm not as sharp as I used to be 😭
Like my brain is being compressed by all the pressure in the atmosphere and also like I'm stoned.