The HELP Committee Hearing on Long Covid

I stayed awake for three whole hours.

Below is the video of the hearing, which I feel quite positive about just because people were paying attention to the testimony and the testimony was THOROUGH. I am a sleepy person struggling with long covid, so I won’t do a play-by-play of the three hour hearing, but I will point out that the first speakers on the panel (patients and caregivers) are struggling against exhaustion to be there and everything they said needs to be heard by as wide an audience as possible — someone you know is saying no to all social events, missing work, has a pill regimen, is sleeping so much, is not getting better, is not receiving good news, is bored, is bonding more with pets than other humans, orders grocery delivery, feels uncomfortable driving, sometimes forgets where they are or what celebrity is dead, is avoiding comparisons to other frightening deadly diseases that may progress from this one, is making excuses to their family in order to avoid talking about dementia and death.

So many people are some degree of bedridden. I used to wonder wtf that meant with Charlie Bucket’s grandparents and idk, maybe they were chronically ill after a bout with the Spanish Flu? Maybe they could get up and go to the bathroom and wash themselves, and I’m sure they were able to throw the sheets in the wash occasionally — I always thought “bedridden” meant literally in bed all the time. I have had lots of bedridden days, but mostly I’m able to do a few little things a day like fix the coffee grinder, make worm tea for the plants, brush the cats, type some shit, throw away a bunch of old things, watch Senate hearings about long covid, bother my kids, research how to replace the evaporator fan in my fridge, wonder why everything is always breaking, take meds sort of regularly, stay hydrated …

I was not expecting Senator Cassidy to go on about dog pee. Why did he do that? Such a strange man.

Anyway, protect each other. Y’all don’t want this.