Brain Fog Strikes Again!

It's been 32 years since I felt well. Many tests, and a handful of doctors, over the decades finally came up with diagnoses of not only hypothyroid (untreated at least 10 years after the first abnormal TSH) and Degenerative Disc Disease, but a fairly rare auto-immune disorder called Mixed Connective Tissue Disease. That alone explained all my overwhelming fatigue, the polymyalgia, the debilitating joint and bone pains, maybe even my stress cardiomyopathy/Takotsubo Syndrome from 2009. Heck, even my lack of weight loss during those years I was on near starvation level calorie diets!

But most important to this particular blog post, it explained the brain fog. It all started 32 when I was pregnant, and was self-diagnosed as CFS a few years later, "self" because my primary care doctors "didn't believe in it" as a real disease. They were of the generation that referred to it as "Yuppie Flu" and dismissed my symptoms because 1) I had a baby at home and 2) I was fat. I was glad to get the diagnosis of MCTD because it took over 30 years, but I showed them I really *was* sick!

Anyway, brain fog, for those of you who haven't had the pleasure of experiencing it, makes you lose time, makes it hard to string a coherent sentence together, can cause you to space out during conversations, and at times, makes you look like a dog who suddenly sees a squirrel. I can be driving around with my husband carrying on a real conversation and in the middle of a sentence, sometimes in the middle of a word, break away with another thought on a completely different subject. I'm sure some of you noticed that in my writings, too.

Anyway (See what I mean?), the other day I decided to go off-menu and instead of making what I had planned, I wanted to treat my husband to one of his favorite meals, Chef AJ's Red Lentil Chili, because he was having a rough day at the home office. I always have the ingredients for it on hand so it would be a snap to make up. I was extremely tired that day, so figured getting all this in the Instant Pot and setting the timer would give me time to take a little nap before dinner.

Potatoes got washed, poked, and popped into the microwave, timer set to start cooking them a half hour before dinner time so they would have a chance to cool a little before we sat down to eat them.

Gathered the chili ingredients and started blending all the wet ones. Got the lentils rinsed and into the pot. Turned off the blender. Added all the spices. Put the lid on, set the IP.

Headed into the bedroom to grab a book. Hubby joined me after he finished up his work and we watched another episode of our favorite Brit-Com, Waiting for God. My husband tells me so often I'm just like Diana, one of the main characters. It's not a compliment! LOL




Dinner time. I open the IP and immediately notice something is "off." The chili takes up only half the amount of room it normally does, and it's brownish, not the usual pinkish-red. It also smells different than usual. Not bad, just different.

We decide to try it, so serve and break up the baked potatoes and ladle the chili over it. Tastes great. Hubby has seconds. 

Dinner is over. I start putting leftovers away - potatoes into a zipbag for waffle potatoes in the future and the chili into a glass Pyrex. I walk over to the refrigerator to put them in and then I see it.

I spy the Ninja blender with the blended tomatoes, peppers, onions and garlic.

Darn!! OK, not the exact word I used, but this is a PG rated blog.

I told my husband I'll just put it away and make a new batch of chili for the weekend. I turn to get a container to put it in and when I turned back, saw him pouring about 2 cups of it into his bowl and then grab some bread to dunk!

Now the expletives really start flying, because now I don't have enough of the sauce for another batch of chili! All I get out of him was "Oops." 

"I JUST SAID I was going to use the sauce, WHY the **** did you DO that?!?!!"

His reply was: "Well, it just tastes so good I didn't want it to go to waste."

I repeated the above line, adding a few more WHY's and possibly a few more ****'s, too.

At least I can salvage what's left and use it over the weekend on our weekly pasta meal.

At least my fatigue and brain fog went away for a while. Now I was WIDE awake and mentally alert.