Long Covid Awareness Day

the birthday nobody wanted

This is a hastily written post, and I promise to share news of Phillip at the end of it, for anyone disappointed that it isn’t more nature-y this week. Apologies also for not foreseeing Long Covid Awareness Day as I (and millions of others impacted by post-viral illness) foresaw Long Covid. Or rather, I’ve been aware it’s today but hadn’t considered or planned to write anything specific for it here. A case of managing my own energy levels and expectations I think as much as anything, along with having a ‘big deadline’ on Sunday for something and so clearing the whole week to focus on the other thing, alongside the general background cognitive dysfunction of failing to connect these things up in my head, not because it isn’t important.

I have though, through the course of the afternoon felt driven to post something, to acknowledge and reflect, to mark it in some way. If nothing else than because I haven’t seen anything much online about it. There are some wonderful things from people who have long been a part of advocacy for ME as well as Long Covid and there may well be other things I am simply not tuned in to. It is exhausting trying to keep up with things but it is also exhausting subjecting yourself constantly to what is being said, is in the media, and potential research, as well as all the things that aren’t being said and done. It is a full-time job simply living with chronic illness, spending ‘spare’ time reading and listening to information about it can sometimes feel the opposite to being a part of something, or of community, sometimes it can all just been a bit too much.

It will be the fourth year of chronic illness for many with Long Covid, and there continue to be many more who join these numbers, and will continue to. Just as I have begun to feel I am recovering from my own experience of Long Covid two years on, I have picked up something else, something that may also be covid-y in another form. I hope it is not. There is a constant fairground ride of jumping in and out again, on and off the painted horses of the merry-go-round.

The hope in anticipating so many new people would be joining the realm of the sick at the start of the pandemic was simply that we might learn more. I, as so many others, wanted nothing more than to be proven wrong, that people would not stay sick with covid-19 as they have stayed sick with so many other viral and other infections and illnesses. While I am pleased there are so many new voices joining this world I wish there weren’t. The anticipated sliver lining though was that with such huge numbers, and all following a clear trigger infection, there might just be an answer - so many people surely could not get ignored?!

While we continue to wait for that, I’d like to share something I wrote at the start of my own experience of Long Covid two years ago for the British Psychological Society’s Division of Clinical Psychology symposium on Long Covid. See also the work of Lucy Gahan. Lucy is also interviewed on the Long Covid podcast (episode 78) available on apple if you want to take a listen.

If you are interested in reading more from me, I have also had published today a more reflective and thoughtful piece of writing, in dialogue with Moving Mountains contributor Alec Finlay for The Polyphony. In it I reflect on the process of creating the anthology and we consider together the act of witness in living with chronic illness. Alec also has a substack here at

Dailies

and is doing some wonderful creative work on Long Covid, Covid-19 memorials in Scotland, and responses to living with ME/CFS.

I hope you are able to take a look at one of these links. And because I haven’t forgotten, here is also a photograph of Phillip, who is mostly hanging out in my neighbour’s garden this week. My neighbour is a more reliable bird feeder than me at the moment and pheasants are fickle creatures, a lack of loyalty he goes where the food is.

The hurriedly planted bulbs in pots are also brilliantly springing to life this week. I failed to pot them at the right time last year but remembering the fate of previous ones found rotting in their bags last summer, I managed to hurl them all into compost earlier in the year and they are repaying me in multitudes.

with thanks for reading and wishing you a gentle and restful weekend.