Meds, Cognition, and Time

I think I have finally found a way to manage all the meds that doesn’t take a ton of cognitive energy, which I have so little of, all day.

Between all the medications and supplements, there are sixteen pills. Then there are the two inhalers, one  I snort up my nose, one that gets added to food, and one that has to be dissolved in liquid. It usually goes in my morning coffee and—thankfully—has no taste or texture.

I have to remember to take two as soon as I wake up. There’s a hefty handful each with breakfast and lunch, and few more at dinner and at bedtime. 

I’ve had reflux for years, and meds have never helped it, so for a long time I’ve had to be careful what I eat, and when. Adding all these pills to the mix was a process of trial and error to make sure anything that might bother my stomach goes in relatively early in the day and with food. Rolaids and occasionally Pepcid come in if I screw up.

Sometimes I dread eating breakfast because I know it means I have to choke down six more pills.

Before Covid (BC?), I had a hard time keeping track when I all I had to take antibiotics four times a day. Organizing and remembering all of the stuff I’m on now, mostly for brain and lung damage, for which it provides some welcome relief but not nearly enough, has been pretty overwhelming, and it has taken me many weeks to find a system. And remembering if I took a pill or used an inhaler? Yeah, right.

After much searching, I found a pill organizer that is actually big enough for the breakfast and lunch doses. Bonus: the daily inserts come out of the organizer, which makes them so much easier to fill and empty than the kind where everything is connected.

And I’ve finally figured out how to use the iPhone “tasks” app effectively. I’ve divided up the day into two-hour intervals and I can check everything off when I do it, and then uncheck at the end of the day to be ready for the next day.

But, you know, I’m supposed to be finished with breakfast and all the morning meds (plus three full glasses of water) by 10 am. I just took the morning meds and I’m still working on the third glass of water and I’m an hour and a half late. I am trying to give myself the grace not to stress about that.

Covid Brain Damage

Covid damaged my brain. “Brain fog” is too vague a term. It also implies something on par with jet lag. I have lost some kinds of cognitive ability, but not others. Writing this post is documentation as well as part of the process of figuring it out.

My short-term memory is shot and my medium-term memory isn’t so great either. I’ve always been the classic absent-minded professor, and I’ve developed mechanisms to cope: writing things down, creating alarms for myself, leaving notes around. I have a list of my lists, to make sure I won’t forget they exist. All of this memory management, plus more impaired memory, slows me down a lot more than it used to. 

But words. Words are hard. I have trouble remembering their meanings and I have trouble finding them.

I can’t keep up when people are talking, I guess because my brain is so slow. I get confused, and then I get lost in the conversation. Weirdly, I come up with the first letter of a word, and then stutter while I try to get the rest. Or I find the word, but in the wrong language. So social interactions are exhausting. 

Reading is harder than it used to be. Reading! My mother taught me to read when she was pregnant with my brother so I could occupy myself. I was so young I can’t remember not being able to read. I was the classic bookworm, always with my head in a book. More than that. My mom called me the “reading monster.” 

Word recall makes writing harder. Google is great for finding synonyms and even helpful if I can only describe the concept I am trying to name. But it’s also hard for me to organize ideas, at sentence level as well as in paragraphs and longer texts. All of this is tiring: I’m good for maybe an hour. Writing this post is wearing me out.

(On the other hand, my ability to do KenKen hasn’t changed. I had a lot of fun with the now defunct Digits puzzle, and I’ve gone back to Nerdle, which I’m actually finding easier than before. Arithmetic, logic, strategy. Wherever those things are stored in my brain, it’s unaffected.)

This all matters because I can’t do my job. Any of my jobs. 

There is no way I could teach a class, and manage the interplay of lecture segments, student activities,  discussion, and questions, while keeping track of all the students to make sure no one is lost, distracted, or tuned out. 

And then there’s grading. Why grading is hard when teaching literature, where there are a lot of different “right” answers yet also some wrong answers, is a whole other blog post.

I was on sabbatical when I got Covid, and I had a lot of editing and writing balls in the air, and I almost immediately dropped them all. Some of them have been picked up by other people. I have some very, very patient editors. Even staying on top of email is … well, impossible.

I am doing better than I was during the immediate post-covid weeks. Physical therapy and occupational therapy helped some, medications are helping some, fancy new glasses made a difference (and I am getting fine-tuned ones next week). I have a new list of medical professionals to set up meetings with, based on recommendations from my cousin the psychiatrist and the fancy eye doctor.

But progress has stalled. And I don’t know if or when it might get unstalled. Stay tuned, I guess?

We Need To Find A Way To Ban Plane Advertising

Advertising planes fly over the beach seven days a week in my neighborhood. I am three-quarters of a mile away from the beach. I have been spending a lot of time outdoors resting, when not treed indoors by global boiling or poor air quality.

Even at my distance from the beach, I usually see two or three advertising planes a day, even on weekdays, and more on weekends.

The most common small plane, according to the Intertubes, is the Cessna 172, which seems to require around 8 gallons of gas an hour.

My Honda Fit gets 33 mpg driving around on suburban streets, 40+ on highways. Let’s call it an average of 35 mpg. 

Let’s say they’re out there flying for six hours a day: that’s 48 gallons per flight. If that’s a good guess, then one of those planes burns as much gas in under a week as my car does in a year.

One part of me reacts to this by thinking there’s no point in worrying about my own carbon footprint when this is going on. 

Another part of me wants to figure out what businesses are flying the planes (the signs face the beach, not my backyard) and write to them all to tell them how I feel about this.

Another part wants to write to Governor Murray and Vin Gopal and suggest that they make this kind of advertising illegal.

And then there’s the part of me that’s feels like all of this is too much, because Long COVID. 

But I will, I hope, revise this post into a letter to write to some of my elected officials, and I hope you’ll feel free steal whatever is useful and do the same.

If you do, please let me know. Thank you!