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When Dr. Andrew J. Laster’s heart started beating so fast as to be classed tachycardia ( heart rate over 100 beats a minute), he attributed it to anxiety about life’s problems.
Then, the neurocognition changes happened. Again, he decided sleep deprivation was the cause of his “brain fog”.
Between regular and frequent conferences, several papers in various stages of editing, and hundreds of daily emails and texts, his schedule is hectic. This time however it felt overwhelming, like never before.
Laster changed the way he managed his time and projects, and leaned on co-workers and his manager to help him stay on track, but he still had a challenge in his hands.
The most troubling thing was the times I would look at a reminder note I had written to myself and not recognize it or its meaning. I got scared.
I wouldn’t describe it as oblivion as it was much more than that. It came on subtly and slowly, rising from 2 months post acute infection to a crescendo around months 6 to 8. Although I dislike the phrase and have found it somewhat pejorative, I now strongly approve of the term “brain fog”, which hung like a cloud especially impairing my ability to multitask.
It is now considered a classic sequel to COVID-19. This persisted for a couple of months, but I was able to exercise and felt calm, he continues.
Like a number of others, he was fortunate to have recovered from the delta variant within only a couple of weeks of a severe upper respiratory infection, for some accompanied by anosmia (loss of smell) and acute fatigue. These symptoms tend to improve significantly over about 1 month but what follows is anything but easy.
For most, long Covid can be debilitating. The frustration and anger that I and many long-term Covid patients experienced is real and deserves to be acknowledged. More needs to be done to address post-Covid syndrome.
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