A Concerned Scientist on Nostr: I never cease to be amazed at the fact that so few people even seem to realize that ...

I never cease to be amazed at the fact that so few people even seem to realize that long COVID is a thing. I'm even more amazed when doctors don't. Honestly, I'm not sure why this gets to me every time at this point, but it still does.

Some of you may remember me talking about my wife's boss previously. She's had COVID at least 7 times and finally started to think that, just maybe, her "bizarre autoimmune disorder" that her doctors couldn't figure out could be COVID related.

So, today her and my wife are chatting on Zoom about things and my wife mentions that we're growing lion's mane and red reishi mushrooms in the forest. Her boss laughs and asks if she can get some because she's been spending "tons" on reishi and lion's mane supplements to "try to remember things again."

This leads down a discussion where my wife gently asks her if she's talked with her doctors about long COVID. She says "Yes! I remembered you talked about that, and I saw some headline about it, so I asked my GP. He said that's when you have COVID symptoms for more than 12 weeks. Since I'm not coughing(she is....but let's ignore that for a moment) and I can breathe well he said it's not long COVID."

Audible sigh from my wife....and she moved on. She saw me go through this with one of my friends last year when his doctor very literally laughed in his face after I convinced him to ask about whether his sudden onset of debilitating arthritis a couple of months after a COVID infection could be COVID related. It poisoned the water between us, because clearly at that point he believed his doctor and thought I was a conspiracy theorist for talking him into bringing it up.

The education on this sucks so much that you can't even help people when you really want to.