every new day

hopefully this post finds you reasonably well.

Chances are you are going through it, and I am grateful that you are taking some of your time to sit with me. I write today due to a rare window of health that allows me to focus. Several weeks of adding journal entries to a Google Doc has helped me feel a little more comfortable about writing again. It has been years. As a non-traditional anthropology student I preferred writing intensive classes because it allowed me to engage with the subject rather than agonize over remembering details for tests. Months after catching covid, my typing became slow, my thoughts blinked in and out of the dark like fireflies after dusk, and every new day brought a new cluster of alarming symptoms.

It took a long time for me to seek treatment, longer still to be seen by a doctor, get a referral to the post covid clinic, and have my first appointment. I have been diagnosed with PASC (post-acute sequelae SARS-CoV-2 infection). So far I’m only being treated for depression. Like many, I sought advice online, followed doctors, patients and epidemiologists on Twitter and Mastodon, joined some long covid subreddits, and looked up medical journals. So far the treatment is time and rest. I would love if time and rest paid the bills. So, I hope to use this blog to learn and share more about post-viral illnesses like long covid while I pace myself between crashes, I hope it helps someone who is struggling with this disease, I hope it helps your loved ones understand and believe you. At some point I will pass the hat, but I will limit my use of the paywall if I use it at all, because I too read helpful things for free.

Community learning

My goal is to learn whether it is possible to heal, and try to heal in the meantime. I want to ask questions and do research about public health responses, disability, and the history of post viral illness. I have relied on various communities to learn more about this and other post viral illnesses, and it has been lifesaving. Recovery from long covid is generally slow, exhausting, and so painful. Not being able to do things one once loved doing or needed to do to feel independent is frustrating enough but having to explain it to loved ones who can’t conceptualize it and may not believe it is real is emotionally fatiguing. Having access to communities of care is valuable.

I’d like to share actions, inactions, and distractions that have helped when I was immobile, physically exhausted, in pain, frustrated, bored. I’ll share my art projects, writing, mental exercises, and coping mechanisms. They are fairly easy, ordinary things I can do a little at a time, slowly. Maybe this will encourage somebody to think of things they love to do that are within reach. What if our reach extends?

As far as vitamins, supplements, medications and that sort of thing, it is best to get your information from someone who knows more than me, so if I mention supplements or medications I take, it is not to be mistaken for a recommendation. I honestly worry about my use of generic otc migraine medication and had to cut down on Emergen-C because my B6 levels were high, so as you may gather, I am winging it, but I disclose it all to my care team and my labs are mostly unremarkable.

To subscribers, thank you so much.

If you want to encourage my work, I am happy to offer support tiers and come up with ways to express my thanks. It is a little challenging for me now, this is a process, but be assured that subscribers will be rewarded when I figure out what I can do.