While remaining mostly functional, in many ways, I'm more sick in 2021 than I was in 2020. Two weeks ago, when I last felt well enough to walk outside, I managed only 0.7km before the post-exertional malaise came on: brain fog, fatigue, pain in my neck and arm. (2/10)
I was formerly a (somewhat) competitive distance runner. It's not that I'm ignorant of how to push my body, nor the consequences. During my first marathon, I pushed through hypoglycaemia, black and white vision, before having a seizure just over the finish line. (3/10)
Post-exertional malaise is different, sustained, worse. And it comes just as surely from over-doing it at work, or in researching long covid, as from exercise. I used to have so much energy. Where is that man I was just last year? I miss him. (4/10)
The closest I've come to death was in a single-vehicle accident in the remote Pilbara. In the air, in the desert, upside-down, I remember a moment of stillness, of acceptance, of simple knowing that my agency, at that moment, was subordinate to basic physics and biology. (5/10)
I would really like to find that moment again. Solution-oriented by nature, I've spent much of the last year trying to solve my own illness. I've found that I only seem to have the power to make my illness worse. (6/10)
The doctors said, when I'd been sick for a month, that I would be better within weeks, then it would be six months, now they assert that my full recovery will definitely happen, eventually. I haven't found these optimistic forecasts helpful. (7/10)
What I'm striving for is that same sense of lightness I felt in my Pilbara accident. To accept who I am right now, and to accept how my illness develops. (8/10)
The allure of unfettered agency is strong, but there is also power in constraint, the power of a vow, of poetry, of having children. (9/10)
Forgive me for sharing, I know that there are worse struggles in the world right now. I know my family and I are extremely lucky in so many ways. Thanks for reading. (10/10)
