[thenerdhead]

Went through two bouts of long covid so far.

https://jondouglas.dev/long-covid/

In the vein of "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", I've come to appreciate life more through illness and suffering. I've also had challenges battling the three horsemen of boredom, loneliness, and helplessness like you would at any nursing home. But I have to say, the way the world has handled this issue was especially discouraging early on.

The medical system felt especially useless (and still feels that way), but it does seem that help is on the way and there's many treatments and funding in the pipeline for the next few years.

Also this is getting plenty of media attention and research is published almost everyday to convince those who think long covid is "all in your head" / psychosomatic.

I will live every day for the rest of my existence with deep empathy to those with unknown/invisible illnesses. For when people treated me like I was "fine" when I told them I was very sick, I felt just like Ivan Ilyich until he met Gerasim. I think we need more Gerasim type people in our lives who can see people suffering and help out knowing that someone will help them when it's their turn.