Everyone has their story to tell. What prompts me to offer mine is in part what I have learned from my faith and practice as a Quaker. Seeking guidance and solace from God, we share when the spirit rises within us, in the hope that sharing benefits others.
My favorite stories have been those which toggle back and forth between the present, the recent past, and the distant past. Also known as history. May I even approach the shadow of the skill of those hard working writers.
I’ll endeavor to post weekly, for as long as the story takes to tell. It will be personal, but intended to lift us up, together.
Today I am partners in a telemedicine practice which focuses on post acute sequelae of COVID, PASC or long-haul; and injury from the COVID vaccines. Our team has evaluated and treated nearly four thousand people since early 2022, prescribing repurposed drugs to keep people out of the hospital, effectively treating acute COVID, and wrestling with the hydra of PASC and vaccine injury. We know what we are up against, and it is daunting. Yet we have managed to learn a great deal, and get better and better at what we do. There aren’t many practitioners in the world who know what we know. There should be.
In February of 2020, I was working as an RN at SUNY Upstate Medical University in the Emergency Department. Upstate is a Level 1 trauma center. In the middle of a shift, I swiftly fell ill, developing a fever, chills, and general malaise. I think that I was assigned to trauma that day. When I told my co-workers that I was having chills and would have to go, they thought I was joking. I knew that I had an hour and a half drive ahead of me, and things were going South quickly. My life hasn’t been the same since. But then whose life is today what it was in February of 2020?
When I was in third grade, I was in Mr Stevens’ class. He wore cardigans, horn rimmed glasses, and drove a faded black Volkswagen Bug. I was the class clown that year. He and I were not friends. We had a beautiful student teacher who I had a crush on; probably most of the boys did. For reasons that my 3rd grade boy brain couldn’t fathom, she announced one day that we were going to have a vote. She wanted to know if the class wanted to be divided up into boys on one side, and girls on the other, or if we wanted to remain mixed together as we had been for most of the year. Boys voted first. Boys wanting to keep it mixed. I raised my hand. No one else did. Then all the other boys voted to be separated, and all the girls agreed. Ms Student Teacher wasn’t done yet though, and said, “Well Scott, it looks like you are the only want who wants the boys and girls to sit together. That’s not normal. The rest of your classmates voted differently, so we’re going to rearrange the room now.”
I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand why my classmates would want to lose the connections we had, to begin building walls, to be manipulated by a relative newcomer, an adult, because it would make her life easier. I used to think this was a hurtful event in my young life. Well, it was, but life since COVID has changed my perspective a bit. That early experience prepared me to call things as I see them, to not be afraid to diverge from my peers, and, darn it all, to expect the crowd to be easily lead down the garden path.