After 17 weeks of unexplainable, ongoing symptoms, Monica was diagnosed with COVID-induced lupus and is still fighting for workmen's compensation despite catching COVID at work.

“Ambulances and firetrucks arrived that night around 09:30PM. I sat downstairs in the pouring rain. The medics stood far away shouting, ‘Mam stay there. We’ll come to you!’ It felt like I had the plague or something. I watched them suit up. Then, I crawled my way up the steps into the ambulance. That evening I tested positive for COVID-19.”

“Three months after recovering, COVID reignited my rare autoimmune skin condition.”

“My body could not have survived this in the state it is in without the hand of God intervening.”

“I'm not gonna lie, before I caught it, I was one of those people who believed COVID was a government conspiracy theory, like the 5G towers and new world order kind of stuff.”

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.

After Paul brought it home, COVID-19 spread like wildfire to everyone in their house. Though they had some similar symptoms, they all experienced it differently and for varying periods of time over the next month.

"I was going downhill quickly and plasma turned me around."

"The second day in the hospital, my health started to decline. It's as if my body was starting to shut down. I felt like death was in my room. I literally felt like I was dying..."

Julia’s symptoms crept in like a rolling fog of fatigue and aching back pain, easy to write​ off as “anxiety” until more symptoms emerged. A couple of weeks later, flattened by COVID’s effects, it brought home that her life and her health were not in her hands.

After being hospitalized from COVID, Yvonne asked herself if she had died, would she have done everything she wanted to do. “No,” she thought. So she began to secretly work on one of her dreams.

An emergency room nurse trained to respond to bioterrorism attacks and Ebola, Susan was ready for anybody else to get COVID-19, except herself. Now, after testing positive again four months after her first positive, Susan's still struggling with the aftermath.

“Then a light bulb went off. Twelve days I was asleep. The only information I had was I got shot. And the nurse said, ‘I'm glad you're better now.’ That's what I took and ran with.”

“If COVID is a hoax, then I’m a hoax. I’m proof that COVID is real.”

“People talk about the physical effects of COVID-19, but no one really talks about the mental health impact. I was not mentally prepared for this.”

“COVID didn’t come with a receipt. I don’t know where I got it and I can’t take it back.”

“I remember getting a call and in the faintest voice, she said goodbye to me. My mom, who I love and often refer to as my best friend, said goodbye to me.”

“As someone who’s always been incredibly active, high energy, and healthy, I would have laughed if someone told me I’d be battling 4 months of persistent, debilitating symptoms from an invisible foe.”