Cher had to educate her doctor about long COVID.

Transcript

He’s like, “Well, I’m not really sure whether it’s really long COVID or whether this is the depression, and your weight.” And I was so offended, because I’m like, “I have had depression my entire life. You know that. We’ve worked through this. It’s never been a life-altering thing. And yeah, I’m overweight, but, you know, so are a lot of people during COVID, and I highly doubt that that is what’s causing all of this. And so I really didn’t trust him for a bit after that … 

 

Well, I put together a long package of – that included that output from the Disability Alliance of BC on the changes in activities of daily living. So what I had been able to do pre-COVID versus where I was at, at the time. And I put together a summary, like a mini-literature review, with citations, of all of the different things that I was reading, which included articles like, this is not depression. Depression is the result of, and just citing all of the more recent research outputs. And as well included a couple of the letters from the OTs [occupational therapists] at the post-COVID recovery clinic saying that pushing and graded exercise therapy is not what we need to be doing, and that that can actually harm, and that we need to be doing other things, and just supporting the idea of complete bedrest, and how – and admitting that that’s just an anomaly compared to every other illness. But with the long COVID or ME/CFS comes post-exertional malaise, and there’s literally nothing you can do for it other than rest. 

 

So I put that huge package together, left it with him to kind of think through, and then, when we met the next time to fill out the paperwork for my short-term disability application, he said, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t totally getting it. I wasn’t totally hearing what you were saying. But I’m hearing you now.”

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