Enduring Long Covid

Why is it so hard to give ourselves permission to be sick? In Episode 13 of the Enduring Long COVID Podcast, I talk about something I’ve been thinking about deeply: I spent almost 30 years as a nurse trying to make it safe for my patients to be sick. But when I became the sick person, I realized how difficult it can be to extend that same grace to myself. People living with Long COVID and ME/CFS a...

Living with chronic illness means making choices about where your energy goes, even on vacation. In this episode, I share how resting allowed me to participate, enjoy my family and actually experience my vacation. Sometimes you have to rest to live.

Pacing is more than resting when you’re tired. It’s learning how to live within an energy envelope that may change from day to day. With Long COVID and ME/CFS, I’ve learned that every activity has a cost—physical activity, cognitive activity, conversations, showers, work, errands, and even things I enjoy. I think of my energy like a scarce resource. I can’t spend everything I have today and expect...

Many people think Long COVID changes your life overnight. For many of us, it doesn’t. It happens slowly. One symptom at a time. One activity at a time. One loss at a time. In this episode, I talk about the gradual decline that so many people with Long COVID and ME/CFS experience, and why it can be so difficult for others to recognize. If you’ve ever felt like your world has quietly become smaller,...

What if Long COVID didn’t create the problem, but uncovered something that was already there? In this episode, I share a question I’ve been asking since the beginning of my illness. Could some people have been predisposed to immune dysregulation, with COVID acting as the trigger that revealed it? I talk about my own health history, why I asked my doctor this question years ago, and how today’s Lon...

Episode 8: What Are We Doing Wrong? What if the question we’ve been asking is the wrong one? In this episode of Enduring Long COVID, I explore why so many of us feel like we’re failing at recovery even when we’re taking our medications, pacing, resting, attending appointments, and doing everything we can to heal. I share a new perspective that has been changing the way I think about Long COVID: ou...

For years, I searched for answers while feeling dismissed, misunderstood, and unsure of what was happening to my body. Everything began to change when I found a physician who truly listened. In this episode, I share how being believed allowed me to stop fighting for validation and start paying attention to my symptoms. It was through that trust that I began to recognize patterns like post-exertion...

There was a time when nothing about my illness made sense. I didn’t know that watching my favorite TV show could leave me exhausted. I didn’t understand why I stopped returning my friends’ phone calls. I thought exercise would help me recover, but instead it led to one of the longest crashes of my illness. And after moving my belongings in 2023, I entered what I now call my “upside-down world”—a p...

In this episode of Enduring Long COVID, I share what happened after my second COVID infection and my attempts to continue working as a registered nurse. I believed that if I could just find the right job, my health would stabilize. I transitioned from bedside nursing to the GI Lab and eventually to a work-from-home position, hoping each change would finally allow my body to recover. What I didn’t...

In Episode 4 of Enduring Long COVID, I share what happened after I returned to work believing I was recovering. Although I was still experiencing shortness of breath, exhaustion, chest pain, brain fog, and an elevated heart rate, I continued working as a bedside nurse during the pandemic. My physician requested a reasonable accommodation to prevent further COVID exposure, but the accommodation was...

In Episode 3 of Enduring Long COVID, I share the story of what happened after the initial infection. Like many people, I believed I was recovering. After weeks off work, specialist appointments, cardiac testing, neurological symptoms, and persistent exhaustion, I kept waiting for life to return to normal. Instead, the symptoms continued. I discuss the brain fog that led me to tell a neurologist, “...

In Episode 2 of Enduring Long COVID, I share the story of the day everything changed. What started as unusual exhaustion after a shift at the hospital quickly became a series of symptoms I couldn’t explain, severe fatigue, shortness of breath, brain fog, a racing heart, and a body that no longer seemed to function the way it always had before. I take you back to the motorcycle class where I strugg...

In the first episode of Enduring Long COVID, I share why I created this space, my journey from registered nurse to Long COVID patient, and my hope for building a community where people living with chronic illness feel seen, heard, and understood.