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What Covid-19 Did to My Brain
One person’s experience with the neurological symptoms of the disease
Long after she recovered from Covid-19, the disease is still affecting one writer’s brain. Jessica Firger shares the neurological symptoms she’s dealing with after her Covid-19 infection. Here’s an excerpt:
There was the time I walked from my bedroom to the bathroom and, out of habit, washed my hands immediately (and quite thoroughly!) but then forgot to pee. Or the times a text from a friend would appear on my phone screen and I’d have no idea what she was talking about, even though I’d written to her just a few seconds before and she was responding to me. One Sunday morning, my boyfriend, Matt, was over. We were making breakfast, and I cracked the eggs into the carton rather than the bowl: The kind of mistake you call a “senior moment,” but only when you are actually a senior. “Are you okay?” he asked me. I laughed it off and said I didn’t know. Was I?
I had other lingering neurological symptoms as well. I was still putting far too much pepper on my food, because otherwise it didn’t taste like much. Sometimes there was ringing in my ears. My entire body ached, and I was so fatigued it felt like I was training for a triathlon. There were also migraines every single day that started mid-morning and didn’t go away until I eventually fell asleep (if I was even able to sleep at all). My brain felt too large for my skull. Some nights the throbbing was so intense it was as if my brain contained a second heart.
