Cattywampus (blog post): "My Long Covid Isn’t a Burden on My Wife"

[ahimsa]

This blog post is a response to the NPR article which framed the act of avoiding COVID infection as fear even though it was someone who is immunocompromised.

My Long Covid Isn’t a Burden on My Wife
And she's here to tell you about it.

https://theheatherhogan.substack.com/p/my-long-covid-isnt-a-burden-on-my

(line breaks added in quote below)

Yesterday, NPR published an essay titled “Wrestling with my husband's fear of getting COVID again.” ...

The writer’s husband seems to have recovered, but is terrified of the cumulative dangers of reinfection. He doesn’t want to eat inside restaurants, host dinner parties without asking friends to test for Covid beforehand, or go to the movies.

“He is immunocompromised and his doctors warned him that if he got sick again, it may complicate his autoimmune disease,” the writer states. Yet, she’s torn. “I want to keep my husband safe and healthy. But I also want our old life back,” she writes.

To her, that seems to mean that her husband will ignore the risks to his health and life so that she can enjoy the social life they shared before he got sick.

Julia Doubleday has written brilliantly and beautifully about the NPR op-ed, breaking down how disabled people's exclusion from indoor spaces is a civil rights violation, not an annoyance for their spouses.

I also want to counter the NPR narrative, but in a more personal way, so I interviewed my wife about having our lives flipped upside down by Long Covid.