On Thursday and Friday I spent six hours daily glued to zoom, for the Inflammatory Brain Disorders Conference. Speakers, both physicians and scientists and physician-scientists, from all over the world, spoke. The research is intensive and ongoing. They spoke about Long Covid, both the immune response and “brain fog”. They spoke about anti-NMDA antibody disorder (the book Brain on Fire) and now there have been over 500 people identified with that disorder and a whole bunch more antibody-to-brain disorders! They talked about PANS and PANDAS and chronic fatigue and Mast Cell Activation Disorder and about the immune system over and over. The new information is amazing and I need to reread all my notes. Psychiatry and Neurology and Immunology are all overlapping in research, along with Rheumatology, since these disorders overlap all four.
It is a medical revolution in the making.
Best news was that 96% of Long Covid patients are better by 2 years from getting sick. That is tremendously reassuring, though the number may change. And the definition of Long Covid is still being sorted out and we do not know if people relapse.
I felt that MY brain was MELTED by the end, but I managed to enjoy the Rhododendron Parade on Saturday and just puttered around the house on Sunday.
KO Rural Mad As Hell Blog 
My brain is mostly working now with some bizarre slips. I keep my chapstick in the watch pocket of my jeans. BUT for years and years and years I kept it in the back pocket. Yesterday I “lost” my chapstick. I looked for it in the usual places and found it in the back pocket. It seems that when it’s focused on something in the moment it retreats to very old habits for things that are relatively unimportant. It’s scary.
The conference did imply that Covid-19 messes up the brain wiring, so maybe you are defaulting to previous wiring. It is looking like the brain heals, though we don’t know long term outcomes yet.
That makes sense. Did the conference discuss how the brain “feels,” I mean in a physical sense? A kind of fatigue?
Hmmm. I don’t remember. I took copious notes from the Long Covid sections. Will go back over and hopefully write some of it up. I think they did say that.
Soft and squishy.
Ha. Yes.