Funny but not funny symptoms

The other day, when it was raining, I got to work and couldn't figure out how to turn the windshield wipers off in my car! I just sat there for about a minute thinking "Hmmm, what do I do?" It was kinda funny. I could've just turned the car off but didn't really think of it at the time lol

I've also been missing my one turn on the way into work. I finally realized why: At the one light, there is a construction site and I turn at the next light (the turn I've been missing). Well, the construction is finished and there is a building and parking lot there now!! My brain has somehow not processed this change of scenery yet!

I'm also having visual, auditory, and olfactory disturbances now. Last night I got floaters as I was sleeping, in my dreams. Weird.

And I've started smelling random smells. One night, I woke in the middle of the night to a strange smell (I can't remember what it was but it was so out of place.) Yesterday, I started smelling hot dogs on the ride home. Hot dogs! Of all the possible scents in the world, my brain chooses hot dogs!! I had to laugh...I haven't eaten a hot dog in years!

I've also had an almost constant humming in ears (it gets worse at night). Apparently I've had this symptom for years, because when the ciccadas were coming out last summer (or the summer before) people were complaining about the sound. I remember thinking "aren't they out every night?" lol

"Ciccadas and Hot Dogs: My Lyme Journey" Sometimes you just have to laugh.

Lol, I'm feeling amused and sorry for you at the same time! It's so true that sometimes we have to laugh, what else is left? If it makes you feel any better, I can share what my Lyme brain decided to do a couple of weeks ago ;) I was shopping at the mall with my boyfriend and as we were at the checkout, I noticed my backpack had been unzipped and left open, and my cell phone was missing. I panicked right away and told my bf about it. He said 'go find the security desk, they have CCTV and maybe they could track the person who stole your phone'. So I wasn't thinking much, just went ahead and called it in. The security guy told me he needed to get his supervisor, so I waited. As I was waiting, I put my hand in my pocket. MY PHONE WAS THERE. I must have taken it out of my backpack and put it in my pocket, but I didn't remember that! I had to explain this to the security guards, cancel the whole drama and I'm telling you, I haven't been this embarrassed in a long time.

Yeah, I guess there is some upside to this - at least it seems funny to me now.

Another weird thing my Lyme brain likes to do: I often have a hard time remembering the appropriate word to use in a sentence, while talking to someone in my native language. The funny thing about it is that at those moments I tend to eventually find the right word, but... in English. So I speak this Polish-English hybrid at home on a daily basis, LOL. At least my boyfriend gets me - he works as an English teacher and he does that himself all the time, even though he doesn't have Lyme brain.

A question for those of you who speak any foreign language - does it happen to you to mix two (or more) languages together just because you can't recall the right word in the one that you're currently speaking?

The funny/bizarre symptoms are probably what keeps me at least laughing at the thing...also, they are a way for me to communicate with coworkers/family about what I'm experiencing, while trying to keep it light, though some probably still think I'm looking for sympathy.

But I get those weird smells too. I smell cigarette smoke, as if someone just took a puff in my house, and I don't smoke. I smell food and other smells that others don't. I also have multi-pitched tinnitus that sometimes creates a harmony with occasional loud lower tones chiming in. I've had single digits turn white while the rest of my hand is beet red...I could go on and on...

One other odd thing I've found is that in addition to the ST memory and writing/skipping letters, I'm reading words incorrectly...as if my brain sees a certain word and associates the main letters with a different word, and I continue reading, then stop and say wait, that word didn't make sense...I have to go back and look for the word my brain created, but it's not there.

The smelling symptom is very odd. For me it's the smell of garbage, fish, and pot roast.

Also the sense of smell can be very heightened. Its like a super power lol. Some times driving in traffic is horrible. Smell all the exhaust fumes times 50.

Construction on asphalt about made my head explode ...**** these infections

pmm73 said...
I don't really notice heightened sense of smell. My hearing is so sensitive though; the sound of my co-worker's heels on the floor makes my head want to split open...and he's a man just wearing regular dress shoes!!

I have this as well...it's like I latch on to a specific sound and I start to have a mental response, I get agitated, I start mimicking the sound. Like my coworker typing...it's unbearable sometimes. Other times I don't even notice, but I've read that the brain response is actually triggered by certain sounds for different people. And the severity of your response generally has a correlation to your relationship with the offender!

I'm still doing it. I live between 14-17 miles from the town I do most of my errands.

So, I don't live there, but I've been going there for many years at least twice a week.

I was trying to cut over from one place to the next through side streets that are pretty familiar, but I had one of those blank outs, wanting to turn up a short street and seeing a sign that said "wrong way".

Well, I didn't think much of the sign's opinion, it looked like it would work, and so I turned up it, only to see that it was a one way street and I was going the wrong way.

Thankfully no one else was around and I turned around in a driveway, thoroughly disoriented. In my defense it was only one block that was that way, every street around it was 2 way.

Still....It wasn't very far from the courthouse/jail and sheriff's dept. I could have ended expensive for me.


Oh man on the noise thing pmm73 and njfillet! I concur! Though I don't mimic the sound, it just wraps around me and blocks out everything else.

Fingers drumming, feet tapping on floor, throat clearing....some guy in a pickup to my right in a parking lot the other day, I was waiting in the car for my friend and the dude was beating his hand on the side of his door. AND staring at me! I swore he knew he was driving me up the wall!

I have to turn the tv up if the room is quiet while we're eating. I can't hear it over my own chewing, lol

The relationship correlation is spot on!

Post Edited (julymorning) : 11/15/2016 11:51:23 PM (GMT-7)

Last weekend I was doing laundry at a new laundromat. The machines were so new and QUIET, and I was the only one there. Until a young guy showed up and just kept sniffling. I thought I was going to lose it listening to him sniffle for an hour. I couldn't get out of there fast enough lol

It's weird, july, when you say you turn the tv up to drown out the chewing. There is music playing overhead at work, and I usually listen to the news on my computer all day. So there's also background noise that doesn't bother me. But the phone ringing and those darn shoes seem to go right through me!

Bumping this as it's the most recent thread for giggles at our Lyme symptoms.

I just got out of the shower. I have my fleece jammies on, a sweat shirt and managed to pull one sock on and the other half way. (My stomach is hard and bloated today and hurts to bend over.

I couldn't find my purse. I walked out to the kitchen and asked my friend if he had shoes on, could he check the car for it? He comes back in with it. I thank him and he bends over, picking something dark up from the floor, and says, "I think you lost a sock." I stick both of my feet up and check one at a time and say "nope, still here". And he say's "well, what is this", as he's flipping it around with one hand, in the semi dark kitchen, and we both see at the same time.

It's a pair of my panties, left in my pajama bottoms this morning when I was getting dressed, forgotten and not put in the clothes basket. They had dropped into a pajama leg and then fell out, as panties often do when you are standing in front of a guy.