3 months ago, I came down with COVID for the 4th time on a ship in the Arctic Circle. (How’s that for a Mad Lib mashup of a sentence.)

I’ve spent most of the past 3 months sick, on a crash course of learning about Long Covid - everything we know, the more we don’t. Learning about the indefinite suffering experienced by people who’ve been dealing with things like ME/CFS for much longer than Covid has been around. It’s clear that in some ways, people with long Covid with ME and dysautonomia-type symptoms are the ‘lucky’ ones — we are more likely to get treatment sooner, less likely to be gaslit about symptoms than people who’ve been dealing with post-viral illnesses for longer.

I’ve been hesitant about publicly identifying as ‘sick.’ Not wanting that to become my identity, to be reduced to that. But the only way I know how to get through things is by writing about them, and so I’ve been doing just that.

I refuse to let it subsume the other parts of my identity, but the truth is, it has swallowed me. I am bending to it. I have to, if I want to get better.

Hoping my posts help anyone who’s in the early days of chronic illness or knows someone who is and hoping to connect with other people on here who have been through or are going through similar!