FAQ

Brain fog. Solving it would enable me to work a mental job and also make a better plans surrounding remaining symptoms. However, I suspect symptoms are connected and rising tide would lift all boats in this case.

There is a persistent feeling of mental dullness. Feels like someone poured a sticky thick substance into the center of my brain. Often feel a little dazed and lightheaded. There is a feeling of being both alert and foggy , the way you might be if someone jolted you awake from a deep sleep. Sometimes I forget certain details that I shouldn’t. Thinking on command, especially high level abstract systematic thinking/learning which was a forte of mine becomes difficult to impossible.

It’s never anything worrisome like forgetting my mother’s name, but is enough to make me feel mentally overwhelmed even by simple tasks. This seems to complement my fatigue negatively. I feel this on most days, and it is worst in mornings/afternoons, somewhat better at night. I have many ambitions that require on optimal mental state and this stands firmly in their way.

This often accompanies fatigue, but I almost never feel sharp even when I slept well. My memory also waxes and wanes

I think it became persistent (while still intermittent) post Mono in summer 2014, especially between 2015-2016. It was interacting with bad sleep as well as anxiety/depression issues (those go back further). However, I think I experienced an earlier form of brain fog just connected with my depression in high school. This lifted relatively in my first year of college along with depression. There is some description of brain fog before 2014 but not as frequent or debilitating

It takes a great effort to do the things I need to do, even basic ones. And paradoxically, I’m punished for normal levels of exertion by feeling more tired than if I had stayed still. I have the energy levels of an elderly person, not a man in his late 30s. Sometimes walking around I’ll have a feeling like there is a vacuum sucking the energy from the middle of my body making me want to stop standing.

I have never been a good sleeper, or what you would call a “high energy person” even going back to childhood. I was fatigued and underslept much of highschool and frequently tired during the day. But if I got a good rest I could be fine. As far back as I can remember the afternoon nap was a fixture.

Fatigue that lingers became a frequent visitor following an Epstein Barr Virus (EBV, or Mono) Infection in summer of 2014. I got better, though from that point on my journals complain of longer stretches of mysterious fatigue.