The Guardian: My wife had long Covid and killed herself

[luv2fly]

My wife had long Covid and killed herself. We must help others who are suffering
Nick Güthe
The medical community must find answers for those suffering from long Covid. They are running out of time and hope.

My wife, Heidi, took her own life after a 13-month battle with long Covid that started as a mostly asymptomatic coronavirus infection. Long Covid took her from one of the healthiest, most vibrant people I’ve ever known to a person so debilitated that she could not bear another day on this planet.

I came home one day last May to find that she’d decided to end her pain. As our 13-year-old son waited outside for the paramedics, I tried desperately to revive her. I did a good enough job that by the time we got her to the hospital they could restart her heart, but she was brain dead on arrival. The emergency room doctor assumed that she died from depression. When I told him, “She wasn’t depressed, it was long Covid,” he looked at me with bewilderment and asked, “What’s long Covid?”

Late last night I got a desperate Twitter message from a man whose wife could be the next Heidi. She has long Covid and was threatening to end her life. She had already told their eight-year-old daughter her plan. I called him immediately. Heidi and his wife both suffered from unexplained neurological tremors and internal chest cavity vibrations so bad they lost the ability to sleep.

Like prisoners of war kept awake for days as a method of torture, their minds lost the ability to make sound cognitive decisions. I knew this man’s terror. Sadly, his call was not an anomaly. I have answered requests like his every single day since my wife’s obituary went viral and I began to share our story with the media.

More at

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/12/long-covid-wife-suicide-give-others-hope

[FakeNoose]

1. Wow, very sad story

[KT2000]

2. Have a friend going through this

She also has debilitating headaches and some other symptoms. She is taking a drug she knows will shorten her life but she cannot get through the day and night with the pain. Doctors really need to learn about this because it is not being taken seriously.

[mnhtnbb]

3. Today I was talking to a friend

who wanted to believe that COVID will become nothing more than the flu.

I told her about long COVID. About the research finding anywhere from 30-70% of hospitalized COVID patients having long COVID, not just fatigue and brain fog, but heart, lung, kidney or other major organ damage.

The media is not covering this enough.

[Evolve Dammit]

4. Damn. No words

[Farmer-Rick]

5. After the 1918 flu tore through the wold

A noticable decrease in life expectance was recorded in patients who had recovered. I always wondered what were they left with to endure after they recovered from the flu.

"We were leaden-footed for weeks, to the point where each step meant a determined effort,” Miss Goring recalled. “It also was very difficult to remember any simple thing, even for five minutes." 1918 flu survivor.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/5915616/long-flu-1918-pandemic/%3famp=true

This is why you don't even want a mild case of the flu. Maybe those crazy anti-vaxxers are actually suffering from long COVID and are just not thinking clearly. This is why TFG is so damn stupid.

[luv2fly]

6. That's an interesting article

It's worthy of its own post, if you're so inclined...

[LymphocyteLover]

7. Yes, I've heard the stupidity of Trump and his followers blamed on COVID before

wouldn't surprise me at all

[LymphocyteLover]

8. Yes, it's incredibly tragic and needs more research

[slightlv]

9. I'm trying to emotionally support my daughter

through this. She's had long covid for over a year now. It hits her mainly in a fibromyalgia-type expressed joint/nerve pains and extreme fatigue. Before Covid, she had worked so hard to get healthy and had not only lost all extra weight she carried but also worked out to the point of looking really buff. She was so proud. And then she caught Covid. She had the mildest of symptoms, but it seems like they took forever to go away.

And then long covid took over. At least an MD recognized it for what it was. She managed to move with the grandkids from ARK up here to KS with me, but life has been a series of ups and downs for her since she got here. I help all I can, even if it's just providing a shoulder to cry on sometimes. She adopted a child she'd been fostering, and the stimulus check had really been helping a lot, but now that's gone (all my grandkids are teenage and older boys). The latest situation was a guy who rear-ended her and totaled her car. Hurt her and my oldest grandson with whiplash and what sounds like, for her, a version of PTSD. The job she wants so bad is a civil service job where one form can't seem to get to the one office that needs it, although she filled it out at the HR office and they sent it, themselves, from the HR office! IOW, it's just life intruding. But on top of the aches and pains and extreme fatigue, not to mention debilitating depression caused by the long covid, it just adds the cherry on top and makes everything seem so overwhelming to her.

I finally got her to make an appointment with a therapist; hopefully that will help. Meanwhile, "Mom" is always here for her. Luckily, I have an extra car that I'm working towards making street worthy once again to give her until she can get her car situation straightened out without feeling like she's hemmed in by deadlines or money strictures. Once a parent, always a parent.

Like you, luv2fly, I don't think enough is being said or done about the diagnosis of Long Covid. It worries me that corporate structures will lose their "flexibility" where it's concerned once we come to a sense of normalcy (if ever). As bad as Susie has suffered with this, I know others have had it so much worse with various organs being involved. But from a parent's side, this is bad enough... I just wish I could wave a magick wand and make all the bad go away.

[drmeow]

10. I'm very sorry for this man's loss

However, I take issue with the following:

global medical community has done little to accelerate research

What part of how the global health community is stretched to a breaking point doesn't he get?

What part of the research community is busting their asses right now doesn't he get?

What part of research is, by its very nature, highly specialized and the global medical community (which is NOT the same as the global research community) can't just say, "Hey, you, you've got a PhD, we're going to assign you to research this" when that PhD may not have the proper training or tools and may not want or be able to drop their existing program of research into ALS or breast cancer or LGBTQ suicides or whatever they are experts in to study this new problem which is less than 2 years old doesn't he get?

What part of research takes time as does publications and just because he doesn't know about existing research doesn't mean it is not ongoing doesn't he get?

I realize this man is in pain and is frustrated - but ignorantly and angrily blaming a community he appears to know nothing about just pisses off those of us who are on the front lines of coping with the shitstorm that academic medical research is going through right now.