Brain fog poll

[TheBassist]

I vastly prefer Dr. Younger’s term “cognitive disruption”. My brain doesn’t feel foggy; it feels totally wrecked. It felt like using a well oiled, precision piece of equipment and suddenly having it replaced by some old clunker of a brain. One of the worst feelings of my life was looking at my lab books in my handwriting and not understanding one blasted thing that I had done just weeks earlier.

My disrupted brain has never once worked the way that it did before February, 1983, before I became ill. This sounds so pathetic, but there was one day in 1991 when I was able to go to the library with my husband (also a physicist) and the titles of the articles in the journals where my research group used to publish made sense to me. Not the articles; just the titles. And then that was gone again.

I feel like I hold this old clunker of a brain together with duct tape and rubber bands. In all of these decades, I have learned how to work around the disruption. But I miss my brain.

I too used to work in a situation that required razor sharp focus and memory (I’m a, or was a pro musician). Six months into the illness one night I was 15 minutes into a show staring at the music hopelessly lost, and it wasn’t even hard stuff. I was embarrassed, frustrated and terrified. How could this happen? I’m a world class sight reader, capable of playing thousands of tunes from memory on two instruments, and it’s slipping away from me. I can still play very well, sometimes, and for 15 minutes max. I used to have no limits at all

 

[Dom]

My brain fogs got worse the last 6 months. I have periods where it's ok but I'm struggling. I work full time and find it really quite hard understanding keeping up with and visualising what people are telling me. I feel like I'm wading through glue. I don't actually think I've ever had brain fog this bad before but I'm not convinced that's true.

I was recently able to get rid of many of my physical symptoms and I'm not in remission but the neuro symptoms are either a little worse or unchanged. So possibly I never thought I had brain fog until I acknowledged it and my physical symptoms were no longer really a limitation.

I'd describe it as feeling hoodwinked, a little hypoglycemic or very hypoglycemic combined with worsened swelling within the tissues of the brain. I no longer suffer from severe swelling at the back of the head or down the spine but I'm pretty confident my brain swelling is just as bad as ever.

For awhile now I've noticed my symptoms are at there least severe when the swelling is at its lowest. I had a week several weeks ago of pure clarity...all week!!! I was firing on all cylinders...joining dots together...it was brilliant. Plus my memory was better. The only driving factor? At the time an absence of vaccination or immune assault.

Both covid vaccines messed me up for 2 mo the apiece and the flu jab always left me malaised for 2 to 3 weeks.

Maybe if we could figure out a way to reduce the brain inflamation that from memory the studies showed we all suffer from? We might then be onto something re brainfog? Physical symptom exacerbation aside. Im unsure if this brain inflamation would be best described as microaglial over activation.

I've no idea if celebrex would work. But as I'm asthmatic I can't take anti inflamatories anyway. I only mention it because Dr Pridgen uses it to treat FM patients.

Unlike many I don't suffer from pots and I therefore am not entirely convinced cerebral spinal blood flow is an issue. Sadly I don't tolerate nimodipine which caused me to have some very unpleasant heart weakness sensations.

 

[Klabautermann]

Almost always...and it's embarrassing when I'm "involved" in a discussion with someone. It's because I'm standing there all derpy trying to do 'word retrieval' and my brain just decided to take the day off. So I'm essentially left listening rather than being actively engaged...hence the quotes with regards to being involved. I get so frustrated with myself over it because I feel stupid since I can't 'tuck away' bits of information and then bring them up with the mental clarity and astuteness of most people. Argh.