Foggy brain

Is it me, or is it brain fog? Since I first read that brain fog was one of the lesser known, but scarier long term effects of Covid-19, I began to see it everywhere. I mean in my mind. Every hiccup in my thinking, every hesitation in my ordinarily smooth coordination (I guess), I thought: brain fog.

Theoretically, it was possible that our friend B., also known as Patient 0 in our neighborhood, also known as the Amsterdam Riviera, had infected my beautiful wife (this was actually highly probable), and that my beautfiful wife (I knew it) had infected me (back in March), and that I now was suffering from the virus, even without the regular 'mild' effects – only with a foggy brain.

Or was this all sheer and utter hypochondria?

Interestingly, my hypochondria could be a side effect of brain fog.

Sometimes I think brain fog would not be at all that bad, if it resembled a real fog, if it meant everything getting vaguer slowly, but what I know about it is that it's more like early onset dementia, in that one by one, certain cognitive functions fall out.

Memory, of course, is first affected. Is it me or am I constantly and desperately looking for my telephone during conversations to search for names, places and facts? Or am I 'just' rapidly growing digitally demented? And even the conversation itself feels like it is flowing less easily than it did before. What happened, in short, with my earlier effortlessness? Or was this just an illusion?

I also notice that when I am reading bed time stories to my children, (much longer always than I should) I stumble on words; or worse, I derail on a sentence and then it takes me a long time to get back on my verbal track, so to say.

Goodbye youth. Hello, old age.