It messes with your head
This may piss off some. Ever since North Carolina state Rep. Tricia Cotham, former Democrat, switched parties and handed Republicans a supermajority in the state House of Representatives (and an abortion ban) after proclaiming herself an “unwavering advocate for abortion rights.”
The stunning shift has not led me to the angry conclusion that she was a fraud waiting to happen. There was something of conspiracy theory to the narrative that she was a Trojan candidate. With her history as a progressive, it did not wash. And it’s a bad look for the left.
Fully vaccinated and boosted, Cotham had had Covid three times, ending up in the emergency room straining to breathe during her third bout. Doctors worried about blood clots.
In February 2022, WSOC Charlotte reported:
Her kitchen island is covered in pills and medical devices to treat lingering and long-lasting symptoms of COVID-19. Cotham says she has to use inhalers and drink three liters of water a day. She has IV drips brought to her house every Wednesday.
“My treatment plan consists of a lot of focused breathing, so a lot of inhalers, a lot of steroids, a lot of nebulizers,” Cotham said. “Night is the worst. It’s the hardest. It’s when everything starts to, I think, flare up. I take it tremendous amount of supplements that have been recommended by trials and doctors.”
“This is a very individual disease that we’re finding or the way that this virus is impacting individuals is very unique and different,” said Atrium Health Senior Director of Advanced Practice Britney Broyhill.
Long Covid can mess with your head.
I raise the issue this morning after Leah McElrath posted this video and thread on the subject.
I had to look up “the Simulation.” Apparently, it’s a thing.
For Cotham, was it the long Covid? There are cognitive impacts, poorly understood. And personality changes (Rolling Stone; paywall):
Although “personality change” may seem like an imprecise, colloquial way to describe what happens when someone’s character or temperament shifts, when it’s the result of an illness or chronic condition, it’s known as “medical personality change,” (MPC) and is an official diagnosis with its own billing code.
Marjorie Roberts ended up in an Atlanta area emergency room three times. “My 40-year-old daughter said to me, ‘I want my mom back.”
As a neurologist specializing in cognitive disorders of the brain, Anna Nordvig, MD, has frequently seen these personality shifts in older adults with dementia, whom she has treated throughout her career. After noticing an increase in cognitive difficulties in patients who had previously been infected with the novel coronavirus, Nordvig co-founded the Post-COVID “Brain Fog” Clinic at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center and New York-Presbyterian Hospital in May 2020 (she and the clinic have since moved to Weill Cornell).
According to Nordvig, many of these personality changes — which she describes as “a temporary or prolonged tendency towards personality traits with which one was not previously identified” — are seen in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, as well as traumatic brain injury. Additionally, she says, many chronic conditions can also cause a change in personality comparable with what Long Covid patients are experiencing, especially the low frustration tolerance that people with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) experience.
I don’t know if this is what happened to Cotham. But I’m open the possibility. It makes more sense than the rumors and political conspiracy theories.