A September New Yorker article on Long Covid by prominent physician and author Dhruv Khullar caught my attention right away. The story, headlined The Damage Done, addresses the serious, widespread and long-term risks of post-viral illness.
I immediately tore into Dr. Khullar’s story. I scanned the pages for the words “chronic fatigue syndrome.” Not finding them right away, I was undeterred. Before long, I found these three words which, when appearing in the context of Long Covid, gives me great hope that relief can come to all of us — Covid and non-Covid patients.
photo by Luke Chesser
What I read about Long Covid patients echoed exactly what ME/CFS sufferers have decried for years: patients being dismissed, their enduring symptoms blamed on them, the hopeless feeling that no one, nothing cure or even help you.
When Long Covid first manifested, I was angry when I read about these patients and the attention their condition was drawing. I’ve been suffering many of the same symptoms on and off for years! And so have countless others! Where the hell had everyone been?
But I would get particularly incensed when I would see doctors saying things like “this is a new phenomenon” and “we’re not prepared for this.”
At this, I find solidarity with Long Covid patients.
It is extremely frustrating and discouraging to walk into a doctor’s office being far more informed of your own condition than the professional tasked with helping you. Our medical world of stethoscopes, microscopes, x-rays, MRIs, etc., has saved many lives, but has also come with an unexpected cost of a disbelief in any condition that shows no external or internal abnormalities.
As Dorothy Wall wrote in her 2005 book Encounters with the Invisible: “We are under a spell of a simplistic dichotomy in which diseases with a visible pathology are considered real and others are not.”
As evident in many recent similar accounts, anger, frustration and mistrust among patients, doctors and healthcare authorities is gaining public ground in the era of Covid and Long Covid.
As for Khullar and his timely New Yorker article, I was humbled by the doctor and author’s deep awareness of this resentment felt from some of these patients towards the healthcare establishment and his simultaneous respect for it.
Still, I can’t help but think that perhaps if scientists and health care authorities did what they were supposed to do back in the 1980s and actually investigated the sudden post-viral outbreaks that were occurring nationwide, we’d have a much better handle on Long Covid.
–Bridget O’Shea