Fog Descends
One of the defining features of post concussion syndrome is what’s referred to as ‘brain fog’.
It comes from the back of my head, over my eyes and feels thick and heavy, making me want to lie down, close my eyes and shut out the whole world. In a period of 8 months I’ve gone from having heavy brain fog most of the time to just having occasional patches when I’ve overdone it. I dictated this in a foggy time so it’s deliberately barely edited:
Like putting your head underwater, so the sounds around you become muffled and distant. Feel like you’re in your own little world where you can’t see so clearly or hear so clearly and you’re there but kind of not there.
Or like when you’ve had the flu or Covid and you lie there and think right. I’m going to do X. And there’s a disconnection between your brain, deciding the thing and your body actually moving and doing it and I’m continues to go by and X just doesn’t happen until your brain goes okay I haven’t got the energy to do X. And time continues to go by and you haven’t moved.
It’s like when you look through your hands as tunnels in front of your eyes, and you can’t see to the side or above below, but only what is the immediately ahead.
When you have brain fog being asked a question is exhausting. Even just a simple straightforward question, because the information retrieval is like scooping round in a bowl of treacle. I’ve got to the point of answering questions with “I don’t know”, which wasn’t strictly true, but I just didn’t have the resources to delve around in the treacle. And a question that required analysis or decision making or consideration just felt like asking me to speak Chinese. Just impossible.
Brain fog is like a heavy blanket over your head that weighs you down and slows you down and makes you just want to stop.
It’s like trying to ride a bicycle uphill when you’re in completely the wrong gear.
It’s like going into a foreign supermarket. You get the general jist and some things are familiar, but most of it just feels completely alien and hard work.
Brain fog is like that moment when you go into the local shop and then forgot what you’ve gone there for. Except most of the time you forget what you’re there for, what you’re trying to do or what’s just happened or what’s just going to happen or what’s going on.
It’s like your personality has been hijacked and you left with mush. I feel like a ghost floating around, kind of here, but kind of not.
It’s like when you’re trying to speak a foreign language, but you can’t think how to put the words together and how to make the sentences except the words and sentences are your own language. So you stay quiet, it’s easier.
Brain fog is like that point on a long haul journey when you’ve been there so long that you stopped caring about how much longer there is to go, and you just feel like you’ll be there forever, and that doesn’t really matter because you’ve stopped caring.
It’s heavy and dense and suffocating and exhausting and draining and overwhelming and lonely and quiet and still and very boring.