After my first, and to date only, battle with covid, I suffered long covid for around 8 months. The infection itself wasn’t bad, but I rebounded and simply never really recovered. In the wake of the infection I had extreme fatigue, dizziness, post exertional malaise. For someone who had been strong and fit before, it was a blow.

 I was, as I always am, impatient to heal. I did some research and decided, based on a few case studies and my own medical history with allergies and asthma, to try high dose antihistamines. I had started these about a month post infection, and they were clearly helping, but then the fires came, and with them an exacerbation of my asthma and environmental sensitivities that made it feel like I was backsliding in my recovery. Worried that I had inflammation that was going to worsen, I contacted my doctor and she agreed to put me on steroids.

Two days into my 5-day steroid pulse I knew I had made a big mistake. I felt floored. What had before been easy exhaustion before, turned into total couch-lock. There was no mistaking the fact that I had made my situation much worse. I quite the steroids, with my doctors blessing, before I finished the box. I waited, but the new worse baseline seemed like my new normal.

And then, a few weeks later, after doing more research, I decided to try taking the antiviral medication Valtrex. This is a common medication for cold sore outbreaks and I had a stash that my dermatologist had written for me just in case I felt a cold sore coming on. I took the drug and within minutes started feeling better. It wasn’t a full recovery, but it was noticeable. After trialing the Valtrex a few times a day, I spoke with my GP –shared my experience and research — and she agreed to write me a prescription for a high dose protocol that I had found in a  trial study for patients with chronic fatigue syndrome. She simply required me to keep up regular blood work to keep an eye on my kidneys.

It was pretty quickly obvious the protocol worked. Over the course of weeks, my symptoms got better and better and I was ultimately able to fully titrate off the medication after 7 months. My chemical sensitivities, environmental illness and asthma remained much more easily triggered, but overall –as long as I could avoid environmental toxins – I was able to get back to a full life, including exercise. Considering where I had started, and how many folks simply never recover from long covid, it felt like a small miracle.

I say that ‘miracle’ part mind you, but in reality I felt a lot like I had won, like my research, my quick action, my retaining such a flexible and open-minded doctor, my diligence in doing all the right labs and self-care, had been rewarded. While it was never a given in my mind that I would recover, I definitely took a lot of credit for the ultimate recovery. I wasn’t just relieved, I was proud. Sure the world had walloped me with disease, but I brought the force of my resources that allowed me to wiggle out of it. Overall, it was a point for Alana.

But now, sitting in my Paris apartment, worried that I might have again been exposed to Covid by one of those sneezers or coughers in my French class, I got to thinking about my long covid misadventures again…

With the long covid, I am so self-congratulatory I ‘got on it’ self-medicated with the antihistamines and the Valtrex, used my research ability, my stock piling meds, to ‘win’, to persevere. But I ignore the part that the same tendencies, the same exact set of traits and biases and resources is what got me to take steroids that made my situation worse, requiring the Valtrex in the first place.

A few more thoughts on what I can learn from my covid misadventures:

1) Even if everything is ‘perfect’ and I can p’wn, and I am able to bring a ton of resources to the table to effectuate outcomes I want, all I buy is a little duration. During early covid times, I brought my wealth, my willpower, to the table and with endured strict isolation, measures that allowed me to I avoid covid longer than most. But after 3 years. that life was unsustainable and ultimately I did get covid. All I bought was duration, not the ability to avoid decay and disease altogether. Here I am, worried about again catching covid a second time and it is obvious that even after so much work that went into recovery, all I have bought was some duration of health before sickness comes again. This frailty, this susceptibility to disease is the unavoidable nature of bodies.

2) When I had covid, I brought years of prep and research to the table. I had stockpiled every preventative drug and supplement that modern science had credibly hypothesized might help battle infection and prevent long covid.  I had a plan, nose sprays, hot baths, sleep schedule, post care, Paxlovid, Metformin, vitamins, herbs, etc. I did everything ‘right’ to avoid long covid. I got it anyway. Why? Because all the preparation in the world doesn’t guarantee the outcome I want. Preparation isn’t some salve that protects me from what the world is, or from the karma I have built. Sickness, death, hell states and suffering are not just possible, but guaranteed no matter what preparations take place ( save those that prevent rebirths).

In fact, some part of my  ‘preparation’ may well have contributed to my getting long covid. Its really hard to say if the Paxlovid rebound, which can entail higher viral loads than initial infection, may have tipped me into LC.

3) That in the very same incident, ie getting long covid, the tendencies and resources I relied on to ‘beat’ the disease ended up both helping and hurting.  The Valtrex and antihistamines made things better, but the steroids made things much worse. In a single instance, all the tools in my tool bag were able to both get me ahead and behind, so doesn’t it mean the tools are not really tools of advantage? All these lives I have built these tools, collected traits and resource I think will keep me safe. But can they possibly be the tools of safety when they are equally capable of putting me in harms way? And if the tools I have believed in, invested in for so long, don’t do what I think they do, don’t keep me safe, what will? Where is safety in this world?

4) Which brings me to a final question: Who is Alana without the possibility of safety? Afterall, this is such a deep sandan for me, coming into this world, winning, proving my prowess/ power/worthiness, by finding the ever-elusive safety. In my mind, a good Alana is a safe Alana. A beautiful Alana is a safe Alana. A prepared/virtuous/willful/wise/etc. Alana is a safe Alana. But what if there is no safe Alana at all? What does that mean about who I am?

I pretend being a good alana, amassing what I believe to be good karma, got me these advantages. That these advantages prove who I am. But if these advantages can turn disadvantage based on the situation, can I still use them to prove my goodness, my safeness, my worthiness.

Maybe an even better insight is this: All my advantages, or disadvantages, prove my past actions, prove that the causes of those things I see as advantage/disadvantage were put in place. But this is just conditionality, the arising of effect based on cause, there is no identity here. There is just the flow of karma, the flow of this world. Nothing is identified. Nothing is proven. Nothing is portended. This is meaningless (this last remark is also an addition of a 2026 Alana, getting here took some time).