I learned some stuff the last couple days, specifically about Fibromyalgia. Seems that one of the symptoms can be what they call "FibroFog" which can be as subtle as forgetting names and transposing numbers or as bad as what is more-or-less a kernel panic (Blue Screen of Death, sudden reboot) in my brain. Essentially a dump of my short-term memory.

For examples, the last several weeks I would have days where I had "lost my nouns" and couldn't recall the names of anything; the shopping mall, or the term 'shopping mall' for that matter, the gas cap, even my friends. I have apparently asked the same question over and over again thought a two day span. I'll be talking about something and in mid-sentence I will suddenly have no idea what we were discussing. Worst of all, I was driving a few days back and suddenly was very confused, had no idea what street I was on, which direction we were traveling, or even why we were in the car. It cleared up fast, but that really scared me.

I've also run into this problem fairly frequently while writing. I'll be going along at a good pace, then suddenly have no idea what I was trying to communicate in the story, or sometimes even what the story is about. It is very frustrating, even infuriating, but it's also strangely comforting to know the cause behind those stops.

Reading about it all put me in a weird place yesterday. I was scared for the first time in a long while until I talked to my friend who alerted me to the phrase FibroFog and whose mother has dealt with it since the year I was born. Her mother is still quite functional, though she doesn't go anywhere without her husband or her daughter, she uses a lot of lists, and she doesn't cook without someone in the house.

I'm still a bit rattled, but today I'm feeling better. I even submitted an application to a freelance Content Mill to see if I can write short articles for some extra money.