Chimére
PHOTOGRAPHED BY MORGANA WINGARD
After six months of debilitating COVID-19 symptoms, Chimére can’t go back to teaching her middle schoolers.
But, she's found a new purpose: speaking up for Black women's healthcare.
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND - August 25, 2020: Black women are not expected to be knowledgeable about their bodies. We've been taught as a culture not to talk about our pain, to be ashamed of it, to be strong, and to push through. When Black women go to hospitals we can't always say how we feel. I know Black women in the hood who don't have insurance, who can only tell you, “Oh, my head hurts.” They can't tell you beyond that. They don't have the language to speak about their pain. We are taught to see doctors as God, people we fear and totally submit our wills to. When we show that we understand our health and science, we are viewed as aggressive and are subject to be dismissed.
So when I got COVID and doctors dismissed me, I felt like I had to speak up for other Black women.
Teaching is my purpose. It's my calling in life. I’ve been teaching 7th and 8th graders in Baltimore for five years. I am a bad ass teacher. I mean that in the best way possible. I give all that I got and that's the reason why I do it so well. Before I came down with symptoms, I dropped off food and other supplies to our students and their families to make sure they had what they needed as we prepared to lock down.
I got sick before classes transitioned to virtual. It started on Sunday, March 22nd with a tickle in my throat. I'll never forget. I had just gone to the grocery store two days before. By Monday, I knew something eerie was happening in my body. It felt like nothing else I had experienced. I was extremely fatigued. I could not stay up and I slept continuously throughout the day. I said to my boyfriend, “I think I have this virus.”
He was like, “No, baby, you don't have it. You don't have all the symptoms.”
I said, “I don't care. Something is happening in my body.” I called the doctor on Tuesday, and went in. That's when the gaslighting from doctors started. He told me I had a sinus infection. I felt hollow when he seemed to dismiss me. But because he had been my doctor for years, I wanted to trust him. So, I took the medications he prescribed and held onto hope that he was right.
I was so fatigued that sometimes I couldn’t lift my head off a pillow. I had to let my boss know I needed to take some time off. I was very resigned to it because I wanted to try to continue to teach, but I couldn't. I knew that I wasn't going to be able to give a hundred percent to the kids. It devastated me because I love those kids.
Even though I wasn’t teaching anymore, my students texted me nonstop asking me when they would be returning back to school and telling me that they were bored. They wanted me to know they missed me.
I called everywhere trying to get a COVID-19 test but I couldn’t get one. On Friday, April 3rd, twelve days after my initial symptoms, I lied my way into a testing site. I told them I had a 100.3 fever. I never had a fever, but I was so desperate. It came back negative. So did the next six.
Since then, I've been to the emergency room at local hospitals probably 11 times and I've been turned away every time. I got two antibody tests -- both came back negative.
But, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had it even when other people tried to convince me that I didn’t. My body felt creepy; like it had been inhabited by something meant to kill me. My cough, fatigue, and sore throat all felt much more intense than any flu I had ever had. I think anyone who has been infected with COVID experiences this unexplainable knowing when it enters the body. We instantly become experts of how it moves through us.
I still have no test proving I had COVID, but I’ve experienced memory loss, loss of concentration and focus, muscle tremors and weakness, stuttering, trigeminal and occipital neuralgia, and nerve inflammation. None of which I have suffered from before.
A doctor decided to run an extended EEG test because I complained of buzzing, tingling, and numbness in my face and the back of my head. Those are usually signs of nerve inflammation in the brain and all of the MRI scans have been negative. The EEG study was also negative so she has been treating me based on symptoms.
Between February and May, I developed an advanced cataract that doctors still have not connected to COVID-19. I believe that COVID-19 attacked my weaker eye, my left one, causing inflammation and blindness. I have had a scratched cornea on my right eye before but never cataract issues. I’m 38 years old; I’m too young for cataract issues. By September I had to have cataract surgery. It is amazing to see after five months, but it is not so fun to walk around looking like Michael Jackson’s zombie character from “Thriller” with a red and yellow eye as it heals.
I became ashamed of having this virus. I became like the women I've spoken about. I hid this for so long. I wouldn't let people come visit. I wouldn’t let friends and family bring groceries. I didn't tell anybody for a very long time.
My best friend, Sequoia Thompson, said, “First of all, you need to remember to tell people that you need them. It's okay for you to need people. But first, you need to admit that you need somebody. Second, we are going to do what we've always done. We are going to navigate through this.” When she said that a light bulb went off. For me, navigating means to tell, to be transparent. I can't walk around this. I can't avoid this. I have to walk through this and her being there with me this entire time was all I needed.
The more I saw people telling their stories on social media, the more I said to myself, “I need to tell my story because people need to know how serious this virus is.” I saw people talking about these stories but I didn't see a lot of Black women talking about their stories. I wanted my brothers and sisters to understand the seriousness of this virus. So, I woke up on a Friday morning, August 7th, at 10:00 AM and went live with my story.
To not be able to teach for almost six months has been devastating. I miss everything about teaching and I miss everything about my kids. I would give anything right now to be able to log onto a computer and see my coworkers, but between the brain fog, the trigeminal neuralgia and the migraines, I can't give that of myself right now.
But, I feel like everyday my voice is getting stronger in another way. I think about what I don't want other Black women and Black children to experience. I don't want other people to feel as if their knowledge of their bodies doesn't matter. I don't want people who don't have health insurance or cannot articulate their symptoms or who may not know what's happening to their bodies with this virus to be forgotten or dismissed. That's why, I believe on some level, there's some type of other level of advocacy for me to do. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but there's something else for me to do. It may not be in a classroom anymore. My calling may be on another platform. But who knows? You know, teaching can come in many forms. I realize I have this powerful voice and people are waiting to hear from me. So, there's this new responsibility, which is overwhelming, but it's still very positive because I know that I have the ability to impact other people while helping myself.
News Articles Featuring Chimere:
They never officially had Covid-19. Months later they’re living in hell (Wired)
For Long-Haulers, Covid-19 Takes a Toll on Mind as Well as Body (New York Times)
Coronavirus (Covid-19) and race: Determination defeats despair for the ‘Black female nerd of Covid’
For more information about antibody tests: