Is This All That There Is?

I found this message-in-a-bottle while looking back through some old writing. Seems apropos today.

A little less than a year ago, I took short term disability leave from my job, so I could try and heal myself enough that I would be able to work again. About nine months ago, I had to admit to myself that my health problems were not the sort of thing that could be fixed--in the sense of returning myself anywhere near to where I had been before I had Covid.

Eight months ago, I returned to work half-time, unsure if I could manage tu sustain a twenty hour work week, or even more optimistically, work myself back to full time.

Seven months ago, I started the process of getting diagnosed at Jewish Health's Long Covid Treatment Center.

Six months ago, I went through a set of cardiac and pulmonary testing. The results? My lungs and heart look ok, so my Long Covid is the neurological version, not the respitory version.

Two months ago I had an overnight sleep study, where I was diagnosed wit obstructive sleep apnea, and prescribed a CPAP machine.

One month ago, I had a screening appointment with the speech and occupational therapy group at Jewish. I took a standard test of my cognitive function, often used as s first step in assessing people for Dementia/Alzheimers. I was also given a more subjective screening about what my day-to-day symptoms were. At the end of that appointment the speech therapist conducting the screening told me that I was typical of many long Covid patients they were seeing; the result of the cognitive function screening was that I am on the borderline between no and mild cognitive impairment (so...woohoo...I guess?), but from the more subjective screening I was showing moderate cognitive imparement (so, again...woohoo... I guess? After all, it could be worse...I might have shown severe impairment...right?)

Based upon that, the therapist recommended that I schedule a few initial appointments to see if I might improve--by receiving occupational therapy.

June 2023: I'll write more about the occupational therapy soon. It has been useful, but it is important to realize--and from what I wrote at the end it isn't clear how well I understood that at the time--that occupational therapy is palliative in nature. That is, it helps develop skills and strategies to help me manage my symptoms, but is not curative--it does not help repair the damage to my brain.