It’s a Long Story

When you experience something traumatic, the last thing you want to do is to relive it. The second to last thing you want to do is to even think about it. Covid was a nightmare. We were sick of it while the pandemic was still raging. But there are some people who can’t stop thinking about it, because they’re still sick. And they’re sick with symptoms that no one seems to be able to fix and they’re dealing with an issue no one wants to hear about anymore. The only thing worse than going to a doctor’s office where no one wants to deal with you is walking out into a world where most everyone else feels the same. “Long-COVID patients, generally speaking, have been very miserable for a very long time, and because the illness attacks their brains, their hearts, their lungs, their guts, their joints — sometimes simultaneously, sometimes intermittently, and sometimes in a chain reaction — they bounce from specialist to specialist, none of whom has the bandwidth to hear their whole frustrating ordeal together with the expertise to address all of their complaints: the nonspecific pain, the perpetual exhaustion, the bewildering test results, the one-off treatments. ‘These are people who have not been able to tell their story to anybody but their spouse and their mom — for years sometimes … And they are, in some ways, every doctor’s worst nightmare.'” NY Mag: The Mystery of Long COVID Is Just the Beginning. At Yale’s clinic, medical sleuth Lisa Sanders is trying almost everything.

+ WaPo (Gift Article): Many long-covid symptoms linger even after two years. Of course, the recent rise in cases is a reminder that short Covid is still around. No one wants to think about that either.