Thread by @McJuggerNuggets

I am quite overwhelmed and humbled by all of the responses to my Covid thread.

It has been very isolating and lonely over this past year, but seeing the community outpouring has meant the world.

I owe it to all of you to write a follow-up…

THREAD 🧵

It took a moment to digest everything that has been shared with me over the last 72 hours…

A lot of “jabs”, misinformation, passive-aggression, “know-it-all-ism”, politics, etc.

But most importantly, there was all of you - those personally affected by Covid. This is for you.

I wanted to share some context regarding my Covid infection in Fall of 2023 during my film shoot.

One of our actor’s kids brought Covid home to him and he tested positive.

Luckily, we had time so we rescheduled his shoot for 3 weeks later, hoping he would be better.

A few days before our shoot, he tested negative. We did multiple tests to ensure that he felt fine. We were good to go.

We shot for two, 12-hour days. By the end of the second day, he felt incredibly run-down to the point where he decided to test for Covid.

It was positive.

The crew and I realized that he was probably contagious for the entire day with us…

We were close quarters doing multiple takes, face-to-face and even hugging.

A huge factor on why I think my Covid infection was so severe is because of the viral load that I received.

It would take a couple days until eventually it felt like I got hit by a train.

The highest fever of my life (104 degrees), out-of-control heart palpitations, pain in my left-upper abdomen, fatigue, feeling faint and delusional.

It took weeks to improve.

Many were curious why it took 2 months until shit hit the fan for me to end up in the ER.

Viral persistence. Even though I improved after a couple weeks, I was never better. I started moving through what felt like a thick fog.

Reality felt darker, dark edges around my vision.

I kept trying to resume normal activity, refusing to lay in bed for a 3rd or 4th week. I was burning 10’s of thousands of dollars on the crew each day.

I crawled over the finish line of my film and still felt off.

Maybe I’ll go resume my workouts and I’ll feel better.

Biggest mistake I could have ever made. I did a modest chest/ab workout…and felt like collapsing.

This is when I started to feel faint each day again. My body slowly struggled to digest food. Then the day after Christmas, I needed to be rushed to the ER.

I was blacking out.

That kicked off my long Covid journey…unable to eat or really move much. Extreme fatigue.

A year later, I can generally get around okay and eat most foods.

I still get a little faint and it takes a lot out of me to digest food. Working out is still a struggle.

I can do light exercise and am doing much better cognitively.

Many have asked what I’ve done to get 70% better and have I received any other official diagnoses?

My scans were all clear. Colonoscopy = perfect. My exploratory surgery found nothing.

My strong suspicion has been that Covid damaged my Vagus Nerve and this may be the case for many others.

It’s responsible for involuntary functions such as heart rate, breathing, digestion, sweating (i’ve had a crazy intolerance to heat), etc.

It’s pretty important.

My regiment has consisted of a tremendous amount of bed-rest. I would eat what I could, which for a while was limited to egg whites, mashed potatoes, broth, crackers, etc.

I couldn’t digest fat or anything with fiber, which leads to even more malnutrition.

It took til Month 3, when I was able to gradually add in small amounts of fat.

I also supplemented Vitamin D (important for immune function) and Magnesium Glycinate (helps regulate nerves/synthesize Vit D), Zinc, Probiotics, Omega-3’s, etc.

Literally tried anything/everything.

It’s really difficult to know what made a difference, nothing was overnight.

Sadly, I still believe the biggest factor in me getting better was rest and time.

I do believe that if I wasn’t in really good shape when I got sick, I may have died. It felt that bad.

For of all those asking about boosters/vaccines, I took the original two Moderna vaccines in Spring of 2021 and did have a reaction to them. I felt a little unwell for a few days and developed a small rash.

After that I was fine, didn’t catch Covid for a full year.

I do wish I had taken a booster before beginning the film, all of the research states that I would’ve had a less severe reaction to the virus.

I’m aware that some people have had negative reactions to the vaccine, but that is not common. Sorry to those that it affected.

No vaccine/booster is a silver bullet, but the science shows that it’s a tool in the arsenal against Covid.

Personally, I wear an N95 mask now in any/all social situations. I really can’t risk getting it again.

It’s heavily stigmatized against, like a scarlet letter.

I’m used to it though. I’ve always got made fun of for drinking water at a bar with friends or pursuing Youtube as a career.

A lot of folks want you to be unhealthy with them, but it’s incredible to see so many pushing up against the status quo…

Fight for your health.

I hope my conspiracy folks out there can reconcile their denial, genuinely wish you the best.

For all of those struggling, I hope this helps you.

And for those that are still healthy scrolling by, I hope the warning is heard and you don’t become another statistic like me.

It boggles my mind how many Long Covid sufferers are out there and yet it’s still falling on deaf ears.

It stirs a lot of emotions in me.

I don’t know if I have the strength yet to work on a documentary about this topic, but its something that keeps hitting me.

I wish we all were more represented. I will stand up for us as much as I can.

We need leadership to acknowledge and address this problem or I fear we will just keep adding to the chronically ill.

If anyone ever wants to talk, I’m here.

It’s still just crazy to me how our actor was unwell for weeks, finally showed negative for a few different days then randomly flips positive when pushed.

It definitely speaks a lot to the persistence of this virus and its ability to evade the immune system.

I want to close by saying thank you to all who showed empathy towards me and for sharing your stories.

They were all deeply moving and I’m grateful that I opened up about this as it was not easy.

I’ve always been about storytelling through YT videos, trying to lift people up.

But this stuff is so heavy that I try to hide it from my audience as to not burden them.

However, this is a truth of mine now.

To my new followers, thank you. I can’t say that all of my posts will be about Covid.

But I appreciate you being with me on this life journey. ❤️