Trego's Mountain Ear

I’ve revised my perspective on nasty side-effects of COVID. It isn’t that some of the listed side effects of the disease or its vaccinations are suddenly sounding like a lot more fun, it’s that I recently read about someone who acquired my own personal tragedy via Covid-19.

I’ve been faceblind for almost a decade, and while there’s probably a lot about my brain injury that could be considered objectively “worse”, the worst thing for me to deal with has been my inability to recognize the people I love.

I am profoundly faceblind. I cannot recognize my parents, nor my husband, nor even my own reflection. I will never recognize the son we’ve recently been blessed with.

So I was horrified to see an article out of Dartmouth- the place in the US for studying faceblindness (prosopagnosia)- that described someone acquiring faceblindness via covid.

The folks at Darmouth have some very good online tests for facial recognition, if you’re curious. Facial recognition is a spectrum, from the very bad (me) to the very good (people who never forget a face). If you’re like me, I’d recommend outsourcing the task; mine is done by a Pomeranian.