WGI Writer Krista Coombs co-wrote an article on MedPageToday entitled, “COVID Long-Haulers in Rural America Need More Support.” Check out the article and interview with her below!
What is your earliest writing memory?
I wrote a poem in the 4th grade about having chicken pox, and how they were popping out of my skin.
What inspires you?
I am always inspired by Nature, and in particular growing plants and looking for wild mushrooms. We live in one of the first green spaces at the base of the Green Mountains. There is a lot of open land for walking and a wild animal highway where I continually watch wildlife and winter tracks coming through our property. I am self taught in mycology and the beauty of where we live combined with all these different colored and shaped mushrooms started my fascination. After many years of interest, there remains an unpredictability that is influenced by water tables and temperatures that I follow closely and it keeps my attention on dead logs and understories of trees. I can find edible mushrooms on most of my woodland adventures from the end of May through September. Every year the same urge to be back in these woods comes back, and calls to me. Since I have been sick, my mushroom “spots” have gotten closer to home and on flatter terrain, and being so confined now has not altered my joy of finding mushrooms or understanding the trees and habitat that they prefer.
Since being sick with long COVID and having vision changes, I have found myself listening to music differently and that always helps my spirit, whether I match my energy, find songs that make me feel more alive, or being helpful in my headphones to keep focused while shopping at the grocery store. I also watch past live concerts on youtube as I really like watching people play music. I remember being in the crowd with that dreamlike feeling.
Why do you write?
I have been working on my own rehabilitation and writing has become a big part of my reconstruction. I started writing to try and find ways to explain what was happening to me. I would get overwhelmed very easily and it was hard to use my right hand. I started writing via emails where I would describe the latest symptoms or doctor’s visit. And then politics, medicine, long COVID and ME/CFS grabbed my interest and I started writing my personal narrative for advocacy purposes which was like writing a speech, with its directness becoming helpful to unburden and organize myself.
In my second winter, I started feeling pent up and like I was in a pressure cooker where my own loud mean voices started shouting at me–all in my own head. I was struggling to concentrate on anything. Someone suggested that I lean into the voices and see what they were saying, and so I started listening to myself differently. I found that I could decide how I wanted to remember and write about something, and that describing landscapes made them come alive again. This became a gift to myself as I was mostly housebound, but could travel places again in my imagination; writing helped create more ease and comfort with myself.
Soon after, I started the Writer Workshop in the 2022 Spring with WGI and Body Politic. I realized that reading out loud was an easier way for me to comprehend what I was trying to interpret, whether my own writing or medical research articles, etc. My memory was questionable and even though I might have just written something, it was often foreign to me when I read it back. I would somehow forget I was the one who wrote it, as it felt so distant or adrift. It was also delightful and trippy, as if hearing it for the first time while also jumbled in was the acknowledgement of an undeniable impairment of recollection. I resonated with active listening as a practice, and since I had spent 2 years at doctor’s offices where no one really responded to me as if I hadn’t spoken at all, the stark difference that people actually wanted to get inside my words with me was really powerful and healing. I could feel the difference and sense of willingness and engagement, which made me feel more substantial and alive.
Tell us about the journey from idea to published article?
I grew up very rural in a town of 750 people and on top of one of the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts. I have been realizing how much this has shaped me. I have spent another half of my life in cities, specifically Seattle and Philadelphia, before moving back to the country and becoming land owners. I have lived in Vermont 3 different times in each adult decade but we are really putting down roots this time as we can sustain ourselves with one job and not needing multiple ones. I have been discouraged by the lack of resources, work opportunities and retention of the younger population as investments seem to only be in tourism and supporting second homes, while so many people are struggling to live here year round.
I became disabled by long COVID in the early first wave where seeking care and support has been arduous due to a lack of access to medical practitioners and the need to travel over many state lines to find most of my care; all while I am often not well enough to exert myself this much, and where I often weaken and flare with more symptoms afterwards. And thus I get trapped by helping and harming myself at the same time and with the added burdens of experiencing a lot of medical trauma that I need to work through each time. I get exhausted by having to recognize over and over again that I am just sick and shouldn’t be treated this way by the people who are supposed to be curious and provide me some support, as that is their job.
I participated in a VT digger media article about longhaulers having difficulties seeking care in Vermont in January 2022, and that opened up a new friendship and working/writing relationship with Anne Sosin, a Dartmouth College health equity professor who co-wrote this aforementioned piece with me. I had just finished working on my first co-written white paper in October 2022 as a NIH RECOVER study patient representative, and I think Anne sensed my momentum from this work as I had just finished it (and am still waiting for it to be published). Anne asked us to start collecting our thoughts together, which ultimately became this commentary, which we aimed to put out on “National Rural Health Day”. I had struggled in the soon-to-be published NIH piece with how to combine the subjective and objective aspects of being a longhauler, and that project showed me how to write more topically with research articles to support. I felt like I was more skilled in describing the humanness of this experience and now I have become more confident in broader researched writing.
Anne and I plan to write more together about long COVID and become more specific to this rural NE region where we both live. It is hard work and knowing that what I think, learn and write can also be valued more widely is surprising and fulfilling. And even though I am still mostly at home, I am not feeling so lost anymore and I hold purpose.
Where can people find your article?
The piece was published on November 17, 2022 by “Medpage Today” and “Second Opinions” Sunday newsletter. https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/101808
What are you currently thinking about and working on?
Since long COVID for me is an exertion illness, I can only do so much all of the time. I mostly traded in my pen for hand tools in the garden during the growing season. And now I have more energy for writing as I am less active outdoors. Lately, I am interested in understanding intelligence and why we deem some people “smarter” or more worthwhile to listen to than others. I have been examining the lack of exposure rurally as well as social media impacts. I would like to help others find their power in their lived experience and change the way health is viewed from outsiders like doctors and community members and encourage ways to listen and observe more while judging less.
I am also reflecting on time and timelines, as my sense of the clock has changed; it is hard to keep track of time, and hard to reflect backwards. Memories still flood me but it does not seem to be categorized in any way that used to make sense. I am continuing to write to encourage my shine and ethos, while exploring what it is like to live with a lot of uncertainty and new disabilities.
