Thread by @NelStamp

One thing I’m going to be talking a lot more about is COVID how it felt, how it’s absolutely Fucked me up. Not for a pity party but let’s actually talk about the lasting physical and metal effects

For one. Let me tell you for someone whose said for years Im tired, I’ll never say it again in the same framing.

Also there’s NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. It’s not like the flu my b. I had to just try a bunch of things and mentally being in New York I basically prayed to my ancestors that I wouldn’t die.

I just want to be real clear people deal with physical illness all the time and I’m not trying to undermine it and being in the United States during this time having had it and still not knowing wtf is attached to it has led to very bad mental health shit for me.

So I started feeling ill literally the last day of March, tbh makes a ton of sense two weeks earlier I went to Disneyland.

It started with the worst exhaustion I’ve had. I would wake up make breakfast and be exhausted. Now I had a throat scratch but I smoke cigarettes so that happens a lot

I thought I was just sad or depressed which is ok and has happened before. But I was so tired that even if I had an 9 hour night sleep I was exhausted after doing what for me was simple tasks.

Now this is part of our country’s inability to really have a place where disabilities are actually cared for and acknowledged in a real way. Because let’s just be real folks with disabilities have been on the mother effing frontline of care for each other

So I feel terrible and exhausted but was like meh something will change and then I started a bad cough and breathing terribly. I’ve had pneumonia before this pain was worst.

At the time (end of March beginning of April) New Yorkers started rapidly dying. So not only am I feeling really shitty it then sets of my mental state of thinking I’m going to die

And then I start getting fevers and chills this is like 10 days in. So to paint a picture: I have a terrible chest pain, I have throat problems, I can’t do basic functions because I am exhausted, I think I might die but I have it light and then fevers start.

I go from maybe I’ll die mentally to for sure I’m done. And there are many people be it Wars, physical illness and not having healthcare, mental health issues have felt that feeling. And honestly it’s not the first time I thought I was going to die and not the last either in 2020

So the next part Ive never talked about it outside my mom, my best friend and my doctor.

There was one day that the chest pain was so bad that I thought I needed to go to the hospital and I made preparations. I told asked my best friend If he could drive me to the hospital, I prepared my mom because many New Yorkers weren’t coming back so I mentally prepared myself

I thought I was going to die. Now many people do for a variety of reasons but hearing about what was happening in the hospitals I had to prepare myself. And it was awful my doctor asked me multiple times if I really needed to go.

I ended up not going I couldn’t sleep that night but I was so afraid to even go to the hospital. This is what our broken system has led to AND an administration that doesn’t care about our people. I had to stay home and suffer and think I might die in the middle of the night.

But my exhaustion and 101/102 degree fever lasted for weeks. I was so hurt physically I basically was always in two places in my apartment I couldn’t physically manage anything else.

The exhaustion lasted through mid May! I started feeling better but mentally and physically there was always something off. I took comfort in the care some friends were able to show me from a far.

So I went about my life not being able to sit in the same place I was stuck in during covid. In fact being in my bed w/out comfort hurt because it reminded me of my struggle. But I managed picked up and began my life per usual and then a few weeks ago stuff changed.

Mid-August I felt exhaustion again and immediately I panicked. I began to have panic attacks, began to drink more because I didn’t want to go back to that place

Mentally I was not prepared to have an exhaustion relapse. Since mid August I’ve had an exhaustion relapse and the confusion, anger, sadness I have had hasn’t helped. Again there is still nothing we can do about it but rest.

But imagine how it feels to survive something and have the effects creep back to you, to know that there are many deaths months after someone has COVID because this country is doing nothing to solve it. It makes me depressed and anxious basically 24 hrs of my life.

I thought it was maybe stress or my emotions that was leading to exhaustion. But I would wake up, be able to functionally do one thing and have to sleep. It is still not as bad but mentally isn’t a place to be in after going through COVID and the whole of 2020.