<
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/09/long-covid-brain-fog-symptom-executive-function/671393/>
"On March 25, 2020, Hannah Davis was texting with two friends when she realized
that she couldn’t understand one of their messages. In hindsight, that was the
first sign that she had COVID-19. It was also her first experience with the
phenomenon known as “brain fog,” and the moment when her old life contracted
into her current one. She once 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,” she told me, “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,” Emma Ladds, a primary-care specialist from the
University of Oxford, told me. It’s also among the most misunderstood. It
wasn’t even included in the list of possible COVID symptoms when the
coronavirus pandemic first began. But 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."
Via Violet Blue’s
Pandemic Roundup: September 15, 2022
https://www.patreon.com/posts/pandemic-roundup-72004171
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
