Slurred speech, aphasia and forgetfulness, what is the cause ?

I am a seventeen year old male with high functioning autism. I was born with a congenital arachnoid cyst, which currently has a diameter of approximately four centimeters.

For the last two years, I've started to notice, that i often slur my words, which has never happened to me before. My pronunciation sounds quite unclear most of the time, almost as if i was drunk, which often makes me difficult to understand to other people. This is strange, considering that my pronunciation up to two years ago was excellent. My verbal development happened early, with me speaking clearly and pronouncing words correctly by age of about 30 months.

Another issue i have is difficulty finding the correct words for what i want to say. I often completely forget the correct words for a thing i am trying to describe, and even more often i use a different word, which has nothing in common with that particular thing, but sounds similar.

It's not to such an extent, that it interferes with my daily life to any significant degree, but it is really distressing, considering that i was described as verbally gifted just a few years ago, and my verbal skills definitely declined significantly, which was noticed by me and people around me as well.

I also seem to forget things more often than i did two years ago, though i am generally very forgetful, which could be due to my ADHD, that stayed about the same during my whole life.

I also suffer with chronic Tinnitus, which i developed at the age of ten and a visual snow syndrome which I've first noticed at age thirteen.

I caught Covid two times this year, the first time in February and the second time five weeks ago. I am not fully sure if the second time was Covid, though i suffered the same symptoms. I am not sure if it had a significant effect on the issues I'm describing.

My question is, what could be causing these symptoms ? I am currently not suffering anything else, that could be related to a neurological disease. I am really afraid, that this could be some sort of a neurodegenerative disease. Could all of this be caused by Covid ? I've started to notice all of these things shortly after the pandemic hit. The first time i caught Covid, that i know of, happened whole two years after i started to notice these issues though. I have no idea what this might be, and any help would be very much appreciated

1 like, 0 replies