The Fog

Luckily I've got these two to look after me.

 So, finally, it happened. I got the dreaded covid.

It blindsided me. One day I was fine, perhaps a little raspy. The next, I was laid out on the sofa with full-blown symptoms.

The virus raged on the Thursday but I tested negative. On Friday morning the virus continued its slash and burn through my body, and I got a positive result. On the third day, I had a temperature of 38.5 and was definitely delirious, but at least that was the last day, and when my fever broke around 6pm, the worst of the symptoms were swept away with it. By the following Friday, I tested negative again.

Now, three weeks on I am fully recovered…at least, I thought I was, but as so many sufferers have said, “it lingers,” which is so irritating. The last few weeks have been so up and down it's no wonder I have been feeling seasick.

I am short-tempered and clumsy, which makes me even more irritable. A vicious circle that nips at my heels and nibbles away at my self-confidence. Little things make me cry and a feeling of nausea bubbles under the surface, making eating a chore. And then there is The Fog.

The Fog has settled in my brain like cheese. I forget words and I think I must appear incredibly slow. In shops, the assistants switch to English because I take too long to find the words I need in Spanish. It makes me feel like an imbecile, standing, trying to make sense of the words I am hearing and slowly flipping through the circular file in my brain to find the corresponding word I need. It’s not just in Spanish though. I, who always had just the right English word on the tip of my tongue, find myself without words, and a super-herculean effort is needed to understand simple sentences. Everything seems to take an eternity to complete, and some chores are just too brain-taxing for me to even begin.

I could blame the heat, but I know it’s The Fog.

I share notes with my sister, who tested positive at the same time as I did. I think she suffered worse symptoms overall, and they were of a longer duration. But now we are both recovered except for The Fog…oh, and the tears and the fatigue.

She is going through the motions; gardening, mothering, and driving her copious children hither, thither, and yon. But I think, mostly gardening and digging holes. I too am sticking to household tasks, ones that do not take too much thought and not too much pre-planning. Writing this is making me sweat. Maybe it’s just the heat, but it shouldn’t be quite so hard, and normally, I can hold more than one thought in my head at a time. Today it’s one slow thought and typing with one finger.

This morning, I watched the news, while finishing my breakfast. I began to make plans for my first task of the day. I wiped up the last bit of egg, turned off the TV, and stood up. What was I going to do? My mind, like the previously eggy plate, was suddenly wiped clean. I had to concentrate hard to remember what that job was and now, as I write this, try as I might, I no longer remember what it was at all. Though I know that I did it. Or did I?

It is more than just forgetting things; I do that anyway. It's the almost Valium-like feeling of, “it doesn’t really matter,” that worries me the most. I don’t seem to care that the days are slipping past and my precious life and all my projects with it. One could argue that I am at least happy, but I’m not. I’m tetchy, and when I do things, I’m careless and clumsy. It angers me when I trip over the dog bowl, something I do on a regular basis. Under normal circumstances, it doesn’t bother me, but now it turns me into a swearing…something…I can’t think of the word I need. Perhaps I am looking for the word, sailor? Or trooper, or guttersnipe? Perhaps I am a snipe, I don’t live in a gutter, not yet. I don’t think so, anyway.

This is not what a writer is supposed to be. A writer has the tools of her trade at her fingertips. The words fall into her lap, and she takes them and weaves her story with skill and acuity. She bends the words to her will. But if the words don’t appear, what does she weave with?

I try to make lists. They are vague and mushy, not the pinpointed lists I am used to. There are spaces in them and plenty of room for manoeuvre. Monday lists slip to Tuesday, to Wednesday and suddenly it’s the weekend again and I start a new Monday morning list and just push everything onto that.

I will recover and get my brain and my tastebuds back. I know I will. But when?

A doctor friend recommended me a supplement to try: magnesium, boron, and B-complex vitamins – but it seemed the hardest thing in the world to actually get it. I tried the pharmacy a few days ago and thought I was speaking clearly and in ‘perfect’ Spanish. I asked for the supplement that contained magnesio (Spanish) and borón – which is what I thought boron was in Spanish. I spoke as clearly as possible through a mask, it is true, and mentioned that in Italian, it was boiron (my friend is Italian). There were two pharmacists and one of them asked me to write the word in English on a piece of paper. I wrote boron and his face lit up with realisation. He said “Oh! Boro!”

So, how different was that??

However, when I went to collect it in the evening, they had managed to order the wrong supplement—there was no boro, boiron or boron, but only magnesium, calcium—I’m not sure how that got in there—and B vitamins. So, I came home despondent, dragging my irritable nerves and fatigued heels with me.

I sat down to have a browse on Amazon. The reviews boggled my foggy brain. Finally, I managed to order magnesium citrate, boron, and B vitamin complex capsules—all separately. Trying to find a capsule that contained everything or even two supplements, proved too difficult.

I have been taking these for about three days now and yesterday I felt superhuman. I even went for a walk. This morning, simple tasks seem beyond me, I have a headache and I can’t make decisions about anything. Last night I had a brilliant idea about a point to add to this blog post, but today, try as I might, the lump of cement that sits in my skull prohibits me from remembering or seeing beyond simple tasks like doing the dishes, feeding the dogs and…what was that last thing? Digging holes?

Note:

Although you might applaud and say—" Huzzah! You managed to write a blog post.”—I would have to explain that it has taken me over three weeks to negotiate the words…and I’m still not sure…I think I need a little nap.