Incidentally, executive function is also the reason I don’t own any stove top water kettles anymore. I decided it was too dangerous after the 2nd time I checked out long enough for all the water to boil away & the bottom to burn off. Executive disfunction makes so many things more difficult.

If there is any specific moment that perfectly captures what executive function is to me, it’s the 1st time I found myself standing disoriented at the kitchen counter w/my pour-over filter ready to go & the electric kettle in my hand. I’d checked out mid-task long enough the water was tepid.

Please, just let me have one unremarkable year. That’s all. This year, my resolution is to find a way to live my life again rather than letting myself be subsumed into just trying to survive. And to spend some time taking pleasure in the company of people I love.

I want balance, a chance to catch my breath, a safe, quiet, peaceful home where I can see to my own needs well enough to start feeling like a person again. I’m so tired of living in limbo while the world changes around me into something terrifying and strange.

On the plus side, if I do develop long COVID, I’m already well prepared to handle pretty much anything it might throw at me!

I suppose they naught be able to assess if I have long COVID if my next MRI turns up new central nervous system damage inconsistent with MS leisions. Demyelination is pretty distinctive on scans.

MS absolutely does suck rocks. It’s the worst superpower ever. I keep asking when I can apply for an upgrade to a cybernetic replacement body but so far no one has responded. 🤣 Bodies are awful. But what can we do? Can’t live without them.

Yeah, loss of smell isn’t common with MS but it can happen and my baseline fatigue/brain fog was already bad enough to keep me essentially home bound most of the time prior to my infection. Even with the acute infection, testing was the only reason I was sure it was COVID.

MS includes such a broad range of dynamic symptoms that anything else going on might as well just be noise unless it’s definitively attributable to something else, explicitly dx’d through tests, or extraordinarily severe. My MS baseline overlaps with pretty much every other known chronic illness.

I should have clarified. I’m not sure if I have long COVID. I’ve been only infected once so far. It’s hard for me to tell because my baseline is already totally off kilter from Multiple Sclerosis (dx 2012) and every single COVID/Long COVID symptom could also be attributed to an MS flare.