Changes

Abstract

In March 2020 I came home from a theatre conference with a nagging cough, which I had been fighting for some time. Yet, it deepened and strengthened over the next few days. In the following week, symptoms accumulated and were strange and fluctuating: an experience with which I would become all too well acquainted in my COVID journey. Two weeks later on a second telemedical appointment a doctor heard me describe the coughing and chest burning I felt—where it almost felt like a sunburn—and told me it sounded like I had COVID. The inhaler she prescribed helped, but I originally dismissed her diagnosis. These were the early days when a test could not be found or taken, so I lacked confirmation that my body would verify to me for the months following through more drastic measures. A year later, after ongoing and prolonged symptoms of costochondritis, fluctuating high heart rates, difficulty breathing, and a multitude of costly hospital and specialist visits—including now being a part of the Post/Long COVID clinic in my state—I am changed. My health, like most of our lives this past year, follows a path of uncertainty and unknowns.