As my body started to physically heal from the latest viral infection, I needed to find things to help me mentally heal from weeks of being incapable of anything other than lying on the couch watching TV. Since I was still extremely limited in my activities thanks to also having Long COVID, I landed on small efforts to help clean and organize my apartment more. This included finally finishing transferring the notes I marked in the book From the Steel City to the White City by Zachary L. Brodt to my digital notes file.
I read Brodt’s book in March for recreation, but unexpectedly he had numerous insights relevant to several of my professional and personal projects that I highlighted for future use. Now, six months later, as I finish typing up the highlights and my thoughts, there is a stark difference in my perspective.
Six months ago, while I still had Long COVID, I had seen continual, though extremely gradual, improvements in my symptoms. At that time, my Long COVID clinic doctor’s prognosis that I would be over Long COVID in 6-12 months seemed eminently feasible.
As such, the insights and connections I made reading Brodt’s book inspired me to expand my World’s Fair blog series, add sites to my prospective trip to St. Louis, and develop deeper background for the research I’m working on this year on the origins and motivations of land use policies in Pittsburgh. Clearly, my Long COVID brain fog was having a minimal impact on my cognitive ability at that time.1
Since then, I’ve reached month 10 of Long COVID and have had multiple significant relapses. Obviously, recovery by month 6 is not happening and recovery by month 12 seems unlikely. My trend line may still be continuing its positive slope, but the gloom of the latest setback is still hovering. The one thing I can state confidently about my progress today is that gap between my best days and my worst days in the last two months is exponentially larger than it was six months ago.
As I type up my notes from Brodt’s book, I nostalgically recall the mental activity it inspired. I did write one of the five World’s Fair blog posts it inspired, but ran out of steam before completing the others. I am still planning a trip to St. Louis for “when I’m better,” but I’m starting to consider that I may need to pare down the activity level from what I could have accomplished pre-Long COVID to something more moderate. I am continuing to work on the research on Pittsburgh’s land use policy history, but I have had to pare down my scope partly due to limitations in my health and partly due to limitations in the deliverables. Brodt’s influence may not make it into the initial deliverables, but it seems like it is fundamental for the eventual book.
The trip and the book appear so much farther away from me now than they did six months ago, though I still cling to the hope that they will happen one day.
- Reading this book did overlap with the period of time where I resumed my sudoku hobby. At first, it took me an extremely long time to complete an easy puzzle as I struggled to remember the various methods to solve it. Also, my brain could not handle my eyes jumping all over the puzzle. However, over the course of several weeks, I improved significantly and was able to resume my usual techniques at close to my usual speed. ↩︎
Feature image credit: perspective by Creative Mahira from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)
Carolyn Ristau 