After a 13-month battle with Covid that started as a mostly asymptomatic coronaviruses infection, my wife took her own life. She was taken from one of the healthiest, most vibrant people I have ever known by Long Covid.
She decided to end her pain one day after I came home. I tried to revive her as our son waited for the paramedics. She was brain dead on arrival at the hospital, despite the fact that I did a good job restarting her heart. The doctor thought she died from depression. He looked at me and asked, "What's long Covid?" when I told him that she wasn't depressed.
I got a desperate message from a man who said his wife could be the next Heidi. She was threatening to end her life. She told their daughter her plan. I immediately called him. The neurological tremors and internal chest cavity vibrations that caused them to lose the ability to sleep were a problem for the couple.
Like prisoners of war kept awake for days as a method of torture, their minds lost the ability to make sound cognitive decisions. I was aware of the man's fear. His call was not an outlier. Since my wife's obituary went viral, I have answered requests like his every single day.
My wife was a screenwriter with a history of social advocacy. She was a talented, beautiful and dedicated mother and we referred to her as "sunshine in a dress". She defeated alcoholism but found an adversary in long Covid that was far more harmful. We were terrified that she would die from a stroke or a heart attack three weeks before she died. She said that she was ahead of scientists in understanding that the brain and heart are also affected by this virus.
The gastrointestinal issues, exhaustion, brain fog, extreme body aches, and many other ailments were all suffered byHeidi. She asked me if something happened to her and I said I would tell the world what long Covid was. I never imagined that I would have to act on it three weeks later, when she decided death was better than another minute in her own personal hell.
Long Covid doesn't come for you all at once; instead, with methodical precision, it slowly robs you.
Watching Covid take her apart was the most terrifying thing I have ever witnessed. My wife was an avid 90-minute-a-day walker, ate only organic (and mostly vegan) food, and hadn't had an alcoholic drink in three and half years. She could barely walk after six weeks of pain in her feet and gastrointestinal issues.
Long Covid doesn't come for you all at once; instead, it slowly robs you. She lost her ability to eat. She was an avid reader but the brain fog made it hard for her to retain information. Sex became painful even when urinating and urinating. Long Covid seemed to steal every part of her life.
I connected with the world's largest Covid advocacy group after the obituary of Heidi went public. I was asked if I would be willing to tell a broad scale story. I agreed to recall my promise. As I shared her story, my Facebook and Twitter inboxes filled with messages from Covid sufferers around the world. They were in terrible pain and felt gaslit by their doctors. They described the same noises that tortured her. No one believed them. The canary in the coalmine was my girl.
The global medical community has done little to speed up research into these terrifying symptoms. I think the risk of long Covid-related suicides will increase. Preliminary research shows that at least one in three people who get Covid will develop long Covid symptoms. If only one in 20 of those long Covid patients becomes disabled or seriously debilitated, we could be looking at a disturbing increase in suicides worldwide.
Suicide is not the same as death from natural causes. It is planned and has psychological wounds for a long time. My son, his family and friends will never be the same. I am not trying to alarm people, but we are in a crisis. The global medical community needs to find answers for those who are suffering. They are running out of time and hope.
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