Amy, thank you so much for all you do. I’ve been a long hauler since April 2020. I tried a 3-week course of Amantadine in the spring of 2023. I experienced a pretty remarkable improvement in energy, but unfortunately it reverted back to baseline shortly after I finished the course. (The Iranian study flags the lack of post-treatment monitoring as another potential deficiency of their protocol - in other words, all the study participants may have reverted to their baselines after treatment as well). My doc was concerned about putting me on it long-term due to some risk of it changing my brain chemistry (?? I’m sure there’s a more scientific way to articulate this!). So that was that. Which was a bummer, bc the only side effect I experienced while on it was dry mouth - much more tolerable than some of the other meds I’ve tried. Here’s hoping more lasting solutions arise. Gratitude to you!
Wow, Nora - thank you for sharing your experience. That is so colossally frustrating to have gotten such relief and then to revert back after stopping it. It’s what happened to me in 2021 after I had a few really good months doing the IncellDx cocktail (maraviroc/ivermectin/statin) only to overdo my activity one week and crash hard, back to square one. Nothing worked after that crash. I am staying hopeful that we all find something that works better for us! Have you tried nicotine patches at all? I just ended a round of them and I felt pretty good. I think I’ll write about it next week. Glad you’re here!
Such great info here. I totally thought the same thing when I saw that article about the woman who divorced her husband after his TBI and got remarried. Definitely so much more to the story than the headline represented and it was really touching.
Also appreciate everything else, including the primary care shortage article.
I don't have new solutions to this problem, but if we really want more med students to head into primary care, we need to pay primary care specialists as much as specialist specialists (med students are now coming out of school with 200-300K debt loads), and we also need to pay them such that they can also take 30-60 minutes with their patients, most of whom have 5-25 chronic medical problems.
What kind of system gives a cardiologist more time to talk about a couple problems with the heart, experts though they are, and a primary doctor 20 minutes to get through 15 problems, 10 prevention items, ordering labs and tests and shots and then tending to mental health? A failing one, right?
Also appreciate you highlighting the added challenges many AA and hispanic long Covid warriors face.
Thank you for the excellent roundup post and for this comment. Those are such excellent points about not only the pay for PCPs but also the amount of time allocated for appointments. No wonder my wonderful new PCP is adept at speed talking. She’s got a lot of ground to cover in 15 minutes, especially with me.
So many disparities for black and brown women/people in the healthcare system, including childbirth and migraine disease too. Interesting articles as always. I wrote my theory on why I feel chronic illness is so prevalent in women the last Friday 13th. For me, it has much more to do with the energetic imbalance between the feminine and the masculine energies which manifests in the physical after many hundreds of years. The medical profession and approach is masculine dominant (manage, control, treat). Nothing particularly wrong with that as such, but we can see the enormous imbalance between need and care and the catastrophic impact this is having on our health, physical mental and emotional. I’ve come across some fascinating findings, combined with my own experiences and the unauthodox approach I took towards creating health that has not only substantially improved my health year on year but has, well, left me balanced in all areas of my body and life: https://warriorwithin.substack.com/p/friday-13th-superstition-and-bad
Interesting, Amber! I can believe it’s a combination of physiological differences between men and women as well as differing energies. I thought it was intriguing in that article I linked about why women are more prone to autoimmune diseases that scientists think it could be something to do with our second X chromosome, and they compared it to how most calico cats are female. I have two calicos so I loved the tie in between my girls and the autoimmune science.
Amy, thank you so much for all you do. I’ve been a long hauler since April 2020. I tried a 3-week course of Amantadine in the spring of 2023. I experienced a pretty remarkable improvement in energy, but unfortunately it reverted back to baseline shortly after I finished the course. (The Iranian study flags the lack of post-treatment monitoring as another potential deficiency of their protocol - in other words, all the study participants may have reverted to their baselines after treatment as well). My doc was concerned about putting me on it long-term due to some risk of it changing my brain chemistry (?? I’m sure there’s a more scientific way to articulate this!). So that was that. Which was a bummer, bc the only side effect I experienced while on it was dry mouth - much more tolerable than some of the other meds I’ve tried. Here’s hoping more lasting solutions arise. Gratitude to you!
Wow, Nora - thank you for sharing your experience. That is so colossally frustrating to have gotten such relief and then to revert back after stopping it. It’s what happened to me in 2021 after I had a few really good months doing the IncellDx cocktail (maraviroc/ivermectin/statin) only to overdo my activity one week and crash hard, back to square one. Nothing worked after that crash. I am staying hopeful that we all find something that works better for us! Have you tried nicotine patches at all? I just ended a round of them and I felt pretty good. I think I’ll write about it next week. Glad you’re here!
Such great info here. I totally thought the same thing when I saw that article about the woman who divorced her husband after his TBI and got remarried. Definitely so much more to the story than the headline represented and it was really touching.
That woman and her new husband are wonderful people 🥹
Hi Amy - and thanks for the link :)
Also appreciate everything else, including the primary care shortage article.
I don't have new solutions to this problem, but if we really want more med students to head into primary care, we need to pay primary care specialists as much as specialist specialists (med students are now coming out of school with 200-300K debt loads), and we also need to pay them such that they can also take 30-60 minutes with their patients, most of whom have 5-25 chronic medical problems.
What kind of system gives a cardiologist more time to talk about a couple problems with the heart, experts though they are, and a primary doctor 20 minutes to get through 15 problems, 10 prevention items, ordering labs and tests and shots and then tending to mental health? A failing one, right?
Also appreciate you highlighting the added challenges many AA and hispanic long Covid warriors face.
Thank you for the excellent roundup post and for this comment. Those are such excellent points about not only the pay for PCPs but also the amount of time allocated for appointments. No wonder my wonderful new PCP is adept at speed talking. She’s got a lot of ground to cover in 15 minutes, especially with me.
Zira wins every time!! So happy to be a small part of their kitty lives. Those memes are amazing and I will be stealing them!! MORE BOOKS!! 😂
😹😹😹
So many disparities for black and brown women/people in the healthcare system, including childbirth and migraine disease too. Interesting articles as always. I wrote my theory on why I feel chronic illness is so prevalent in women the last Friday 13th. For me, it has much more to do with the energetic imbalance between the feminine and the masculine energies which manifests in the physical after many hundreds of years. The medical profession and approach is masculine dominant (manage, control, treat). Nothing particularly wrong with that as such, but we can see the enormous imbalance between need and care and the catastrophic impact this is having on our health, physical mental and emotional. I’ve come across some fascinating findings, combined with my own experiences and the unauthodox approach I took towards creating health that has not only substantially improved my health year on year but has, well, left me balanced in all areas of my body and life: https://warriorwithin.substack.com/p/friday-13th-superstition-and-bad
Interesting, Amber! I can believe it’s a combination of physiological differences between men and women as well as differing energies. I thought it was intriguing in that article I linked about why women are more prone to autoimmune diseases that scientists think it could be something to do with our second X chromosome, and they compared it to how most calico cats are female. I have two calicos so I loved the tie in between my girls and the autoimmune science.
🐈🐈Awwww🥰 absolutely to the physiological as well as energetic. Its all as fascinating as it is mindboggling🙃