Here is all the stuff I went through while trying to figure out what was really wrong:

Sinusitus: Had chronic sinusitis from 1992-2005 caused by an allergy to the carpet adhesive in my old condo. All assumed my occasional dopiness was due to my plugged up head. But my plugged up head cleared in 2006 and my dopiness didn’t. It actually got worse.

In 2008 I contracted whooping cough and pneumonia. Another assumption made about feeling low.

Stress. I broke out in hives and felt very poorly, and the assumption was my dopiness was due to depression. Everybody gets sad, and that’s normal. Depression is something else. I was told to think happy thoughts and get fresh air and exercise. Which I already got. And plenty of it. I didn’t get any better, and by then, I was sure the issue wasn’t depression.

Low blood sugar and low blood pressure: both exacerbate the brain fog and confuse the diagnostic issue.

So here’s this laundry list of stuff which made my symptoms worse, and steered everyone in the wrong direction for well over ten years.

Since my medication has a serious positive impact on my state, I am more than happy to take it now, as you may imagine. But I don’t want to take anything I don’t have to take, especially if it’s the wrong thing! I do believe there’s a tendency to over-medicate these days. And since an ex-family member lost their medical license for severely over-medicating patients, I don’t take any doctor’s word as gold. I ask questions and get second opinions.

You have the right to keep on looking and to go through other possibilities before settling on one thing. You just want what’s best for your child.

This website has a list of possible causes of brain fog.

http://www.drlwilson.com/articles/brain_fog.htm

Almost everyone I know who was told they had ADD didn’t have it. I read a lot about ADD being overdiagnosed these days. Like I said, I’m not a doctor, but you might want to root around.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/allen-frances/attention-deficit-disorder_b_1206381.html

That my relative, of all people, was diagnosed with ADHD was simply absurd. None of us believed he had it, and the medication turned him into a zombie. Now that he has been off it for some years, he is fine. He is fit and healthy and does not have attention problems. He still has lingering effects from Lyme Disease, but none of them are major or attention-related.

I’d hate to steer you wrong. You know your child better than I do. There is nothing wrong with getting a second opinion. If it feels right to you, then you should do that.

As I wrote above, at first I was sure I was just down because of some personal problems. I was very anxious and even breaking out in hives.

My assumption was that I had simply lost my mojo and that I was responsible for my own lack of pep and discipline. I remember for a long time thinking that this was what writer’s block must be.

I don’t think anyone considered this as a serious problem until the migraines became completely disabling.

I’d bet most people feel the same way. In fact, it was my new doctor (got her about 4 years ago) who insisted on a complete physical, not me.

So, I internalized and “psychologized” the problem myself, assuming I was simply lazy or dull or down in the dumps. But when you get to that point, you may not keep looking for help.

A lot of people without health care are not going to get the help they need, and if they are like me, their solution is not only easy and cheap, but it costs a lot less than a reduction in income of more than 2/3, which is what happened to me.

My health insurance got dropped a couple of times because my income fell so much I could not afford it. When that happened, and I was able to afford the insurance again (usually after just a few months) I waited for months more to get care, because I did not want it (whatever “it” was) to be written off as a “pre-existing condition” or my insurance wouldn’t cover it. I was paying hundreds of dollars a month for the migraine medication. Now I pay less than $20 a month.

I am sure our society is much better off with me producing and earning than with me lolling about and not contributing to the tax pool. People can scoff at health care and rules about “pre-existing conditions”, but I’m glad I can’t be bumped, or charged $33 per pill anymore.

The TV schedule thing might not respond completely to medical treatment, though. There are more channels now even over the air than when I was a kid, and it seems that shows go on hiatus and get moved to new time slots mid-season much more than they used to. If you don’t remember a show being at that time on that night, or don’t see a show that you expected to see, the problem might be in the TV network rather than your brain. 🙂

The cholesterol medication got ditched it was causing so much brain fog, but my friend who is a scientist at a major university can’t stop taking his meds. They just have to keep adjusting until they find the right balance. It’s such a life rip off.

I can’t say any of my symptoms were ever written off as signs of getting older especially since I first started to notice something funny when I was still in my 30’s, and if you have a conversation with me, you might not even know there is something wrong. However, if you place an order with me and there is anything out of the ordinary about it, I can really screw it up. It gets put in the “circular file” in my head, and it can take a long time for me to resolve the issue. There is no reason behind it except that it is outside my routine, and things outside of my routine can be very disrupting. It’s better now, but as I said, I still get brain hiccups. I don’t even like to take a day off work because of the disruption.

When I had a really candid conversation with my doctor about my headaches and messed up life about two years ago, she was very understanding and my description of the problem was very specific. It took a long time for me to articulate what was wrong before, because I didn’t understand it as a medical issue. I thought it was lack of self discipline and focus, something I could beat on my own.

It wasn’t.

Anyway, I was concerned about my ability to work with my schedule this year, so I had a complete physical in November. I passed with flying colors. But for my usual issues with abnormally low blood pressure and pulse, I’m fine.

BTW, it’s really embarrassing to have a little fugue episode in the middle of a lecture or interview. Ugh.

And I had a reaction — I too developed aphasia. It also caused me to have a hard time conversing, because my mouth was stumbling all over the place, even though in my head, the thoughts were clear. The mechanism to get them out was disrupted. I also realized that generally, I was not paying as close attention to my surroundings as I usually did. My attention and responses were vaguer (not a good thing when driving in LA, especially when making right turns on red).

However, one day at work, I was intending to type “keep at hand”, and when I looked at the screen, I saw I had typed “meek” instead of “keep”. That was it. I stopped taking the statin, and in three days the brain goop cleared up.

I came to the conclusion that the reason the side effect on dampening the brain was rarely reported was that few connected the symptoms with the medication. They probably got written off as just signs of getting older. It’s made me wonder how many people have been affected this way and had it dismissed.

(Scientifically speaking, your brain needs cholesterol to process things, as it aids the neurons in their functions. A cholesterol lowering medication goes after the stuff systemically, not just in your blood vessels. )