Long Covid Diaries
An ongoing series. Listed here in chronological order from the start, beginning with diagnosis in October 2024.
The salt and nicotine diet
Where I’ve been: Bed. Couch. Glassy-eyed shuffling my dog down the block but not around it. Shower, followed immediately by bed, because one of the things I’ve learned about life in my current body is that a showering requires a recovery nap.
I have long COVID
The Waiting Room
Welcome to purgatory. The water is neither warm nor cool enough for pleasure.
I try. I push. I’ve been called relentless more times than I can count. The harder the challenge, the more driven I am. The more distant the goalpost, the more determined I am to reach it.
But I’ve been forced to relent. There is no space for that part of myself in the body I inhabit now. Worse: that part of myself, left unchecked, would do more harm than good.
Instead, I have spent the past week - the week before the most significant election day of my life - lying in bed and alternately crocheting and teaching myself to play the ukulele.
Activating Primal Trust and Paid Subscriptions
It feels inappropriate to begin my first post-election newsletter without discussing the catastrophe that was this week.
I didn’t mean to sound so…sad in my last newsletter. But then both of my parents called because reading the newsletter made them feel very sad for me, for the state I’m in, and I thought, oh shit, did I do a woe-is-me piece?
Maybe this is a sign of just how quickly one’s benchmarks can shift, but I thought that saying I’d spent the past week crocheting and teaching myself to ukulele indicated that I was doing much better than before. My bar is low at the moment. My definition of an out-of-the-house “activity” is modest.
Looking for Long COVID Zen
I chose a wild moment to start focusing on positive thinking and looking for the good in life/the world. But I’ve always liked a challenge.
The Art of Losing and Playing Monopoly with Luigi Mangione
Hello to all, and particularly to my new subscribers! There are a number of you since yesterday, I think thanks to this piece:
2024: The Year I Lost (the illusion of) Control
A new study reports that 2.3% of US adults currently have activity-limiting long COVID. Granted: all the limitations of self-reporting studies, etc.
Happy 5th anniversary, COVID!
I feel myself checking an impulse to apologize for writing, yet again, about long covid. Batting away thoughts like: shouldn’t I have moved on to the next subject by now? I’m turning into a broken record. Who wants to keep reading about this? Isn’t it enough already? But I’m not going to offer an apologia. Instead, I’m going to ask you to do something. And it’s something you won’t want to do.
Pandemic Puppy Crew
Hi all, it’s been a while. What have I missed? Anything good? Please, really, welcoming ANY good news.
June Gloom
In my last newsletter, I wrote about my relationship with my dog, Eloise – trying to figure out whether she had developed sympathy Long Covid or was depressed about me having Long Covid or had a separate illness/injury. (Answer: all of the above!) After being on crate rest at her trainer’s house to recover from an IVDD back injury, we reunited and things were great for a moment…until I sat down. At which point Eloise shied away from me again. I ended the last newsletter on a hopeful note, recounting that Eloise had happily jumped into bed with me at night. The promise of progress.
I'm relocating to Alaska...in two days!?
Like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, I, too, am heading to Alaska this week. (Forgive me, the phrasing opportunity was too good to pass up).
Why I'm nervous about my nervous system
Hello from Anchorage, Alaska, where the sun is shining, the views are beautiful, the moose are moose-ing, and I am nervous.
I can’t see straight — again.
I can’t see straight. Again. I have the most trouble clearly seeing what’s right before my eyes - say, a pen or finger as it approaches my nose.