An Update on Dianna's Health (Physics Girl) [video]

I was also implying her earnings from her YouTube channel, on which she has over 2 million subscribers. I'm well aware how bad health care costs are in the US. Although I'm not an entrepreneur, I'm willing to wager my net worth does not compare to that of Dianna and her family's. If I were in the same position, I'd probably be less equipped to handle the tremendous healthcare costs, and I probably wouldn't be able to rally thousands of strangers on reddit or YouTube to help pay for my medical bills, even though I'd be more in need of it. Which is both funny to think and perfectly reasonable -- I'm not charismatic nor an e-celebrity.

My point is that it's easy to give money to a Youtuber you like who posts a video with sad piano music and call it a day (I have done this too). It's harder to spend a bit of time to find a way to help the invisible people in your community who may be more in need. You can do both, I would just prioritize the latter.

That was a heartbreaking video to watch. My heart goes out to this woman and her family.

In my experience, having caught covid in March 2020, fatigue is the problem. It's just that calling it "fatigue" doesn't spell out how dehabilitating that aspect is. It's maybe 100 ft/30 meters from my bed to the kitchen. At the worst of my long covid, I was getting winded walking from my bed to the kitchen. So then I'm in the kitchen, I'm supposed to make food for myself. But it's not like I could stand up for any amount of time. Chopping vegetables is right out. Making anything more advanced than microwave food was too difficult at the worst of it. And even then, figuring out the directions on them was sometimes too complicated. And I figured out C pointers and passed calculus. You don't know how your body can fail you until you can't do something that should be trivial to do but you simply can't. It's easier to see for physical maladies - you'd not ask someone with two broken legs why they can't stand up.

Fatigue in a Long Covid context means it's too tiring even to just watch Netflix. That the exertion to sit there and focus your mind even slightly is beyond you. People are able to put Netflix on in the background and still fall grasp most of the story. With long covid, following a plot, just listening, with all the power you have remaining, is simply asking too much of your body.

The most damning part of it is the aftermath from any significant physical exertion. Like going to the doctor in person. Remember, it's a marathon of exhaustion going from bed to the kitchen, so leaving the bed, getting dressed, going to the doctor, sitting the waiting room, filling out forms - remember your brain only barely works so writing out the answer to eben the first question, name, is a challenge. Seeing the Dr, hopefully they're of any use. Then you have to dance for them and take their tests. Finally you get home and crawl back in to bed, exhausted, so you take a nap. You wake up after that nap get some water and go back to sleep becy you're still tired. When you wake up it's literally been 4 days. You pushed yourself because going to see the doctor was important, but the overexertion of going to see the doctor wiped you out and not only were you bedridden for four days, but you were unconscious. That forces you to recalibrate your whole life. You can't just push through things and stay up a bit late or go out to see friends without stopping to think (which, again, is in and of itself a challenge in ways it never was before) is there anything I need to be conscious for in the next four days?

So at least for me, "fatigue" was the primary complaint (followed by "brain fog"), it's just that without spelling out what fatigue actually means in the context of long covid, it's not apparent what that actually means.

Very sad to see. I've seen a few posts recently from her accounts suggesting that things really haven't been good at all. I really do hope things get better, and quickly at that.

Post viral wise, things can get really nasty, even if being infected with the virus doesn't appear to be that bad. I had shingles five or six years ago and have had chronic fatigue since. I'd say I was pretty fit being able to cycle 30 miles a day going back and forth between work, and now I'd consider myself lucky if I could do 1/8 that. I have a stick on me at all times in case I collapse. Congitively I'm pretty borked at points as well. I am better than a few years ago, but it's clear that I'll never be back to where I was -- I experience good days and bad weeks.

Avoid COVID if you can, get your boosters and if you do get COVID or any other illness, really, please try to rest well and avoid returning back to normal too quickly if life allows for that (I know it isn't that easy). I went back to work too quickly and belive that had a significant impact on my recovery.

Let me tell you: $325k/yr is not enough to manage a debilitating health condition that requires constant care.

For a creator of her size, patreon takes 12% right off the top. ($39k)

In addition, there is a transaction fee of 2.9% + $0.30. ($9.5k + $32.5k = $42k)

Then you have to pay taxes. Self employment taxes on $283k are $26.5k. Federal/state/local income taxes are $82k.

189k of your earnings are GONE.

So, you’re at $135k takehome. Not $325k, but not bad, right?! Well, maybe, except this does not include any of the benefits of a traditional job. No health insurance, dental, retirement, etc. Hopefully, they have good health insurance, otherwise they are probably already close to bankrupt.

If you’re wondering whether $135k takehome can support a couple through a catastrophic health issue like this long term, I have the personal experience to say that it can’t. I won’t elaborate further, but maybe someone else can.

At the risk of being labeled a quack, try taking an L-citrulline supplement of about 1g/10kg of weight. This greatly helped my long COVID recovery.

My thesis, which I have no direct science to back up, is that the blood vessel damage done by COVID may be partially responsible. Citrulline metabolizes in the liver into arginine, which is used in either to produce ATP or by epithelial cells to repair vascular damage. The body prioritizes vascular repair, so the arginine you normally produce if you have vascular damage is directed away from “energy” leaving you chronically fatigued. This is the same process by which sickle cell anemia leads to chronic fatigue - the shape of the sickle cell irritates the blood vessel lining. Citrulline is effective in phase II/III trials (sadly the primary researcher died and the research stopped) with sickle cell patients.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11688916/

This helped me a great deal, within a few hours of my first consumption of a citrulline malate blend I bought on Amazon I was myself again after a year of suffering. Within a few months I was able to stop supplementing and felt generally normal. YMMV.

I asked several doctors before starting the regime about safety concerns and they had none (the body urinates any excess it can’t process, and citrulline is a non essential amino acid fundamental to the nitric oxide cycle) and they generally expected it would improve energy - as it did.

Good luck!