An explosive inflammatory response called a cytokine storm damages the blood-brain barrier. This may allow inflammatory cells and molecules—and possibly viral particles—to enter the brain. Patients may develop seizures, confusion, coma or encephalopathy (a brain abnormality that leads to altered mental states or behaviors). (Here.)
Back in April, as the pandemic was just revving up, my dad tested positive for COVID-19. Ninety years old, in a nursing home, a diabetic with kidney and heart issues, he was a prime target with a grim outlook. (His partner had died a few weeks before, negative for the virus but with many of its hallmark symptoms.) Unexpectedly, the virus barely grazed his lungs but ravaged his brain. It turns out, of course, there are many manifestations of this thing, in many combinations. This was his.
Over a handful of days our man of literature and panagrams was groping for basic words, cogency just out of reach. “I don’t know what to say,” he’d finally say, having stalked his intention like a hunter only to watch it bolt into the tall grass.
He called me incessantly at first, at any hour, asking the same questions again and again. More worrisome was when he stopped calling—he lost the mental capacity to dial—and then stopped answering the phone, the ringing no longer meaningful. His audiobooks sat untouched: He couldn’t follow the stories and seemed uninterested in trying, and anyway he had no idea how to turn on the machine that plays them. Soon, he lost control of bodily functions, and he seemed unashamed that others had to clean up after him. He stopped walking. Already a wisp of a man, he lost weight. Already nearly blind, his mind’s eye, too, went dark.
How frightening to lose your mind and bodily controls in rapid succession, but imagine doing so as masked figures in rustling paper gowns float in and out of your sliver of vision, their voices muffled, their words nonsensical. For him there was no leaving the room, no exercise, no showers–just this absurd, terrifying theater. “It’s the infection,” I’d tell him when the nurse would put the phone to his ear–hoping I could calm him. “It’s messing with your brain, but you’ll be thinking straight again soon.”
I promised it was a temporary prison. I hoped I wasn’t lying. I wasn’t sure.
He fought it, hard. He dug deep, groping for the reset switch, searching for order. He knew who I was, who my brother was, to a point: He couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that we were his children or that he’d been married to our mother. The family tree loomed in unreadable script. He craved schedules and routines and was frantic when no one seemed to be following them (even when they were). His panic grew as his thoughts ran in tighter circles.
