"99.9% of young people recover." I was a 28 year old with no underlying health conditions. when I got sick in March. I walked 12k+ steps per day and had never smoked. Let's talk about what "recovered" looks like for me.

*Pulmonary*: My lungs are shit now, and anytime I get a cold it wipes me out for like two days. I have asthma now and carry an inhaler. I have breathing attacks if I try to move too much or too fast. I am off oxygen now but had a cannula for months.

*Cardiac*: I developed mitral valve prolapse and have frequent palpitations, sometimes bad enough to land me in the ER.

*Reproductive*: Period is irregular now and I have PMS symptoms I never had before.

*GI*: Probably TMI, but trust me, it's not good.

*General physical/mobility*: I lost a ton of muscle mass from being bedbound for months, had to re-learn to sit, stand, and walk, I have such severe fatigue that I generally sleep 12-16 hours a day and am still exhausted all the time. My joints feel like they're full of sand.

*Neurological*: This is the biggie. I am significantly neurologically impaired due to something called hypoxic brain injury that I sustained while suffering from covid.

I have brain fog most of the time, can't read more than a few sentences at a time, can't focus, have "brain lapses" where everything just shuts down mentally, I black out sometimes, it's extremely hard for me to learn or process information, and I have grand mal seizures.

*Emotional*: Although I have amnesia (from the brain injury) and don't remember much about the months I spent ill with covid and covid-related pneumonia, I have serious PTSD and still have night terrors. I also suffer from survivor's guilt.

So, when you hear "recovered" don't think "all better." Because it doesn't necessarily mean that. I intentionally don't describe myself as "recovered" but "survived." I am going to be disabled for the rest of my life. Covid is not a joke and herd immunity is not the answer.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is not a list of symptoms I had WHILE sick with covid, or in the months that followed when I had a near-fatal case of covid-related pneumonia. These are the issues I have NOW, months later, when I am supposedly "recovered." #SurvivedNotRecovered