{"id":776,"date":"2023-08-24T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-25T02:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/?p=776"},"modified":"2023-09-14T22:31:05","modified_gmt":"2023-09-15T02:31:05","slug":"existential-crisis-how-long-covid-patients-helped-us-understand-what-its-like-to-lose-your-sense-of-identity-and-purpose-in-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/news\/existential-crisis-how-long-covid-patients-helped-us-understand-what-its-like-to-lose-your-sense-of-identity-and-purpose-in-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Existential crisis: how long COVID patients helped us understand what it\u2019s like to lose your sense of identity and purpose in\u00a0life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lucy* used to be known fondly as the \u201ciron lady\u201d by colleagues at work. In her mid-50s and still the main breadwinner for her family, she had always thought of herself as strong, energetic, and indestructible \u2013 but not any more.<\/p>\n<p>Since contracting COVID in March&nbsp;2020, Lucy told us she had been struggling with relentless fatigue, joint pain, breathlessness, brain fog and sensory dysfunction. But worse than any single symptom is how this leaves her feeling about her own identity. She said she found herself unrecognisable, a shadow of the person she used to be:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/existential-crisis-how-long-covid-patients-helped-us-understand-what-its-like-to-lose-your-sense-of-identity-and-purpose-in-life-211223\">\n<p lang=\"en\">This isn\u2019t who I am \u2013 I don\u2019t recognise myself. I panic if I get on the Tube and there\u2019s no seat. It\u2019s a very strange feeling, like not being in your own body. My fear is I\u2019ll never really get better, and that I\u2019m always going to be at 70% of my former self.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/existential-crisis-how-long-covid-patients-helped-us-understand-what-its-like-to-lose-your-sense-of-identity-and-purpose-in-life-211223\">\n<p lang=\"en\">This isn\u2019t who I am \u2013 I don\u2019t recognise myself. I panic if I get on the Tube and there\u2019s no seat. It\u2019s a very strange feeling, like not being in your own body. My fear is I\u2019ll never really get better, and that I\u2019m always going to be at 70% of my former self.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/news\/existential-crisis-how-long-covid-patients-helped-us-understand-what-its-like-to-lose-your-sense-of-identity-and-purpose-in-life\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Existential crisis: how long COVID patients helped us understand what it\u2019s like to lose your sense of identity and purpose in\u00a0life<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[18,29,30,240,11,238,241,8,14],"class_list":["post-776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-covid-19","tag-depression","tag-fatigue","tag-identity","tag-long-covid","tag-mental-health","tag-patients","tag-research","tag-sars-cov-2","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1463,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions\/1463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}