1er Symposium canadien sur la COVID LONGUE

3rd Canadian Symposium on Long COVID

Coming Soon!

2nd Canadian Symposium on Long COVID

Ann Fischer

I'm a photographer who documents the beauty around me as well as images that reflect how I feel on some of my darker days. I am attaching one of the latter for the symposium.

She is a pea inside a pod by Kathleen Yearwood

This was a lino cut I began during the early healing phase after 7 months of disability. I had a stool to sit on and I tried to work a little longer each time at cutting the design. It was hard but it helped me to have a project and a goal. I made several prints for a friends book. This is a star- nosed mole in her burrow. My friend titled it "She is a pea inside a pod"

C. longue by SZ

My experience of Long COVID, which in French is "COVID longue", is represented here by a concrete chaise longue. The chaise longue has been held as an icon of psychoanalysis; it is the chair on which the patient would lie down and be subjected to the therapist’s dissection. This captures my journey with Long COVID/COVID longue. I have been forced to lie on a cold, decrepit chaise longue and be scrutinized, pathologized and dehumanized for having real physical symptoms. My lived experience of this condition has been reduced to having a mental illness - one that comes with condescension and stigma, not support and empathy the way all mental illness should be treated.

Long COVID is not “all in our heads” as it has been proposed to be, and the individuals who live with it should not be forced to endure ridicule and judgement because of the lack of understanding about this condition. I refuse to lie on this chaise longue.

Wish Poem by Leeya Raj

This is a wish poem about a wish I held on to for the longest time. As I got sicker over time, I learned though emotions that wishes fade and grow. My wish was to go back to my old life and get back everything I lost, which faded over time, but never fully went away. I will always cherish the memories of my old self. I now know after living life with Long Covid for 4 years, that no matter how much I wish for my old life to come back to me, I have to live with the life I have now and that's okay.