Fog: Comforting or Disturbing?

Fog can be seen in many ways and the way it is seen varies from person to person.  In my mind, fog is something that blocks vision.  A person can't see through it clearly which causes it to be slightly disturbing.  In many circumstances, fog isn't seen as a positive thing.  It can be used as an adjective for hiding something or  a way to describe something that a person barely understands.  However, this is not the case for the Chief in the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoos' Nest.  The novel is written from the point of the view of Chief Bromden, a Native American Indian who is seen as deaf and dumb to the people of the Mental Institution.  From pages 3-67 it is unclear whether he finds the fog comforting or disturbing.  

He first mentions it on page 7 when they take him to get "shaved".  Due to the unpleasant description of what is occurring, it seems as if the fog is not comforting at all.  It is disturbing since he is clearly going through pain.  From that point on, the fog is not mentioned until page 36.  He uses it in a flashback of when he was with a girl he really liked.  They were in a factory and the Chief describes everything that he remembers of that memory.  He says, "Her fingernails peeled down my hands and as soon as she broke contact with me her face switched out of focus again, became soft and runny like melting chocolate behind that blowing fog of cotton."  The memory seems to comfort him, making the fog in that specific point in time comforting.  He isn't giving in to it or running away from it.  It is just there.  In a way, this type of fog represents the Chief.  To the people in the ward he is just there since he doesn't speak and acts as if he were dumb.

In page 37, the fog is mentioned a final time.  Whether it is comforting or disturbing is unclear.  He is going through the shock therapy once again, and in the beginning it seems as if he wants to get away from it.  In the end, he says that he will someday give into the fog like others have.  Does the fog comfort the patients since it cuts them off from their senses?  This is what makes the meaning of the fog unclear.