Feeling Foggy?

Working Around The Fog

Living near the beach brings interesting weather. We often experience coastal fog in the mornings and late at night. Most of the time its just something we work around, by driving more slowly and cautiously or using fog lights. Occasionally, though, the fog can get quite thick to the point where it seems pointless or unsafe to attempt to navigate through it.

In many ways this coastal fog is reminiscent of “brain fog” or “fibro fog.” While it’s possible to work around fibro fog, it does require special effort. Some people use note cards, others lists or timers. I’m sure there are hundreds of individual methods for coping with this short-term fuzziness. And most of the time these “helps” work great.

Other times simple equations, memories or knowledge is inaccessible, trapped in a foggy blankness that we call fibro fog. I used to be excellent at remembering locations of my children’s cast off items, my friend’s phone numbers, and multiplication facts. Lately when asked questions concerning these things, however, my responses have changed, because my brain cannot always compute the answer quickly enough. Sometimes I cannot even understand what the words mean for brief moments and feel momentarily blank. So, I’ve come up with some standard answers for when I‘m too tired to push through the fog.  They may seem sarcastic, but at least they don’t make my family wonder about me.

Mom, what’s 2×6? The amount of laundry loads I’ve done this week.

Mom, where’s my Hurley sweatshirt? Wherever you last left it.  Try the car.

Honey, where’s the number for…? Check the Caller ID.

By the way, Caller ID is a fabulous invention for coping with fibro fog. But, if you can relate to this post, you probably already know that. For more information on fibro fog or brain fog, check out this link collection. If you know enough about it and just want some great coping tips, check out this link.

P.S.  For all the moms out there, “fibro fog” is very similar to pregnancy amnesia, except it doesn’t go away once the baby is born!