[justacat]

I've had a tendency of entering prolonged periods of focus throughout my life, and at this point I can feel my brain almost optimize to the task at hand, there is a type of shift.

For example, I played and performed music seriously for a period of time (no singing), and it was pointed out by a close friend that any performance that lasted more than an hour and my verbal center would basically crash. It would take at least 30 minutes or even hours before my brain would be able to start talking like a normal person again. Prior to this point in time I had purchased a pocket dictionary which I carried around, seemingly to combat this issue.

At present, when I have been working on something particularly engaging at work my wife notices because my ability to communicate does suffer.

It is interesting that you noted 3 days, just because I recently heard a researcher talking about how getting away for 3 days can have a cognitive benefit: https://www.rei.com/blog/camp/the-nature-fix-the-three-day-e...

As was mentioned, getting checked out by a doctor does sound like a prudent step.