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A feeling of 'not being all there', 'spaced out', can be post COVID 19 brain fog, seen as one of the complications, especially in long COVID.
A feeling of ‘not being all there’, ‘spaced out’, can be post COVID 19 brain fog, seen as one of the complications, especially in long COVID.
“Feeling out of it” – That is the best way I can explain what I felt one day when I was isolating myself at home after testing positive for COVID 19.
Now, I know it sounds like some abstract gibberish when I say it, and I don’t blame you. I articulated exactly what it felt like with much difficulty, and this is the best I could do. But I felt it. It was real.
Fatigue that comes with the COVID 19 diagnosis is dreaded globally at this point in time, and I also had fatigue. But this was more than just fatigue.
On that day, I was on my bed the whole time. My husband, who was also COVID positive at the time, was continuously tending to me. It was an OK day for him. But me, or rather my brain, felt like I am not me anymore.
The best I can describe it is the kind of state you are in when you hit your head somewhere hard. Except for that annoying sound in your head (tinnitus), when you hit your head, I felt everything else. And this didn’t stop after 2 minutes. It went on! My efforts to watch a movie or sleep turned futile.
It was scary and distressing. I even thought to myself, if this is how death feels like? It was that bad.
After I had this experience, I wanted to find out if there are others out there who have experienced anything similar to this. I did the googling and voila! Hundreds of articles turned up on google in which people describe something called ‘brain fog’ where they can’t think clearly, feelings of being out of one’s self, loss of ability of sustained attention, loss of memory etc. And the worst part of my Google research was learning that there are people out there who are experiencing this even months after recovering from the COVID 19 infection.
COVID 19 brain fog is real. Not everybody who get infected may experience it. For people who experience it, it is horrible. Nobody likes to feel that their cognitive abilities have deteriorated because of an awful virus.
What causes it? Is the damage irreversible? Unfortunately, at this point we don’t know much, but some things seem to help. Let’s hope and pray that there will be more studies on this, as we don’t really know anything about the condition. One thing I know for sure is that I felt it and it was horrible.
Image source: Jardul from Getty Images Free for Canva Pro
Princy hopes and works to give her two cents to improve the public health system in the country. She is involved in research and evidence-based policy making, and currently works as a consultant to read more...
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