This first-person account of long-haul Covid just breaks my heart. It reminds me of how I felt around the time I was thirty. I got some mystery virus, likely (the Vernal doctor said) flea- or tick-borne, a few months after I moved from Virginia to Utah. I had a low-grade fever for nine months, was treated with five rounds of heavy antibiotics, developed a full-system candida infection including thrush, and chronic fatigue that lasted for decades. I’ve never been the same since. And still I’m grateful: that it’s mostly over, that after about a year I was able to function more or less normally, that in the past decade I’ve gotten more energy and more mental clarity, that overall this body is in pretty good shape for ‘over-sixty.’ But I still suffer chronic, migratory joint pain, mental fuzz, and other random symptoms attributed to Lyme and other tick-borne diseases.

I’m grateful it wasn’t Covid, and only upon reading Kaitlin’s story did the misery I lived with for years come back vividly. I tend to forget that it happened. It was a long time ago, and I’ve been learning for years to let go. I felt that there was a primal fear of Covid lurking below my stated reasons for ongoing quarantine, chronic lung issues and a feeble immune system. I hope this helps people understand why I’m so dedicated to protecting myself from Covid. Reading Kaitlin’s account reminded me like a gut punch that I’ve already lived with debilitating chronic illness for years once. Even if I were to survive a bout with Covid, I fear I’d be plunged again into that grueling alternate reality from which I spent decades clawing my way to recovery. May Kaitlin recover fully and soon, and may others with long-haul Covid also; may the dedicated scientists working on it find treatments that will help; may Covid deniers everywhere (including some of my neighbors) finally believe, and make the common-sense efforts necessary to protect their communities and slow down this plague.