The Long Haul
By Paul Stoddard
Fresh long COVID*
SARS-CoV-2
Risen twin waves
rapid
Reconfiguration of space
Beneath
An iceberg
Known as long covid
substantial burden long term conditions
Probable prognosis clusters
Of immunological dysfunction, dysautonomia, mast cell dysfunction, and neurological diagnoses.
Common long covid symptoms
(fatigue, cognitive dysfunction, wheeze, inappropriate tachycardia, gastrointestinal disturbance)
Differential diagnoses
spread across multiple specialties
General practice as the
gatekeeper.
Listening to patients- who have often not
Been heard-
is an important part of tackling
inequality in access to healthcare.
Pathways capturing patients
provide programmes for
a return to
normal functioning.
The pressing need is
to understand
patient experience.
*Found poem from the article: Fresh evidence of the scale and scope of long COVID (Sivan, Rayner & Delaney, 2021).
Scent traces dissolve like ink blots in desert sun.
When I smelled the romano cheese stink
Seeping, Weeping and sweating on my kitchen table,
The stink lifted me
Out of a pool I fell in
Like a boy that can’t swim
Head pulled up like I spotted a familiar enemy.
I had forgotten the joy of judgment.
I walked in the room, but
Can’t find what I’m looking for
The day washed out gray
My breath won’t meet me
Between in-and-out
A gaping hole
holds me
around the chest
My body is like a boy who wants attention
Catch me if you can
My heart runs away from me
beats sounding screams inside,
I drop the groceries I’m carrying.
People say,
it’s all in your head.
Maybe you need to get out of bed.
Try drinking a green smoothie.
Grab some packs of EMERGEN-C.
My body is border territory
Host to invaders and thieves-
still- it’s home for me:}
time, rest, breath, taste, movement, sniffing scents
I am listening. I am listening
To me.
This piece is a work of compassion — compassion for everyone suffering, then and currently, under the long haul of COVID. I caught COVID in October 2020. I had not left the house for months and months and worked from home. However, my daughter got it from her other parent’s home, and I was infected. I did not write about the experience of being in the room in unbearable pain, agony, and fighting against my body in ways I am still unable to describe. Instead, I chose to write about the long symptoms that still affect me over 12 months later. Although there are online support groups and such, I am a poet at heart and a member of this Las Vegas community. Here is where I want to express myself. I hope this piece spreads compassion for all those in much worse situations than I, and educates people that do not have friends or relatives with long-covid about what it is from my perspective. I am under the impression that long COVID still needs light shined on it to bring awareness.
I hope people will seek out information to educate themselves from reputable sources like the British Medical Journal article I used to create the found poem. I simply blacked out words on the page, and, without altering word order in any way whatsoever, I used line breaks and punctuation to create the poem. I am trying to show the fragmented disorientation that COVID symptoms bring about and how they are foreign to one’s bodily norms. I also think, hopefully, that it demonstrates the way the terminology of medicine isolates one from one’s bodily experience, and in beautiful irony, the authors point the way back home in the final sentence. This mirrors the experience of having long COVID and learning to come home to an altered and unpredictable body. I tried to achieve the sense of foreignness to oneself, and the alienation the medical system brings along with the opposite- the feeling of being seen and heard through articles such as this and practitioners who are wonderful and passionate people who care so much about those suffering. I can only hope this increases understanding or compassion. Everyone is still learning together as we go.
Next, I worked on a piece that reiterates the same message of returning home to the body in the end. I think one thing that will resonate with anyone who listens to this poem is the way we all had to come home in different ways during the quarantine period and adjust to what is endlessly and habitually called the “new normal.” However, people are adjusting to greatly varying losses and unimaginable suffering and grief. Again, I hope this brings greater compassion to self and others. There are no separate “mental” and “physical” aspects of health, and I hope the poem conveys that mixture as well.
Truly, I am lucky. Not only for the outcome of having life and mostly returning to health, but as cliche as it sounds, for the lessons, too. I have a new pace and a new lease on life. I am not saying this wisdom was worth the suffering, but I have no other choice, but to be grateful for not only am I alive, but I am actively living.
Photograph courtesy of Paul Stoddard.
Paul Stoddard finds inspiration in conversation and the community of Las Vegas. He works as a teacher in the Las Vegas Valley where he attended the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Poetry is a place like home where he can love, contemplate, rest, nourish. love, and create.
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