[Translated from French]

To illustrate her long journey through long COVID, Dr. Anne Bhéreur shows me a photo sent to her by her friend Julie Pinard, who also suffers from a severe form of the disease. It shows the ice of the river at Kamouraska, sparkling in a thousand pieces under a winter sun. In the distance, fog. On the other bank, Mont des Éboulements.

The photo captures what Dr. Bhéreur has been going through since she was infected with COVID-19. It was in December 2020, following an outbreak in the palliative care setting where she worked. The doctor, a mother in her forties with no medical history and boundless energy, was convinced that she would return to her old life after 10 days. More than four years later, while she is still living with serious after-effects of the disease, she is beginning to come to terms with the idea that this life may not come back.

“I find it hard to think that I will not return to my practice,” Dr. Bhéreur told me, her voice breaking, with whom I spoke via videoconference.

On the eve of the fifth anniversary of the pandemic, COVID-19 is a taboo subject that some have the luxury of forgetting. But for the thousands of Quebecers with long COVID, forgetting is impossible. They feel their lives in pieces like in the photo. Feet in the ice. Their future in the fog. And in the distance, those mountains that will still have to be climbed.