In early January, I contracted COVID-19 on an international flight home to the United States. It started with the symptoms of a simple cold, then within a couple of weeks, chest pain, abdominal pain, and shortness of breath. That was followed by unrelenting fevers starting in early March and exhaustion even with the most basic tasks like talking or taking a shower, as I moved into the basement to isolate myself from my wife and nine-year-old child. Later, I developed vein inflammation and a voice-box ulcer. Most recently, at nearly nine months since onset, I was diagnosed with post-viral syndrome, otherwise known as myalgic encephalomyelitis.
My voice has been publicly absent until now. As the number of COVID cases rises, however, those with long COVID are statistically also increasing. The higher those numbers, the more of us in this nation there will be who suffer for months on end, not the two weeks generally assumed to be the case for those who are not hospitalized.
