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What Covid-19 Did to My Brain
Long after my acute symptoms waned, my brain still couldn’t keep up. Here’s why experts think that may be.
My stove burners were filthy. I had put off cleaning them for close to five weeks, but cleaning falls to the bottom of a to-do list when you live alone and have to convalesce in a pandemic. It was the first week of May, and my acute textbook Covid-19 symptoms — fever, chest pain, shortness of breath — had gone away weeks ago. Now I was standing in my kitchen, grateful to be putting my life back together again. Though there was one part of me that definitely hadn’t recovered yet.
I finished dinner and grabbed the scrubbing sponge to chip away at the layers of crud on the stove. I had just put the kettle on to boil moments before, but the way my mind was working it could have been years ago that I’d decided to make tea. When I consider just how close I was to moving the kettle over to put my hand in an open flame and pick up a searing-hot burner grate, my body still shakes. But at that point, a month after recovering from Covid-19, it was my reality. My brain was broken. This had been going on for close to two weeks.
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…
