Thx for listening. 🙏🏻❤️

Ps. One last thing, what experience as a patient would you like to see brought to life in a painting?

I could use some inspiration. 🫂

Living in with #LongCOVID (& #MECFS) is an endless cycle off missing payments, denials, appeals, letters I struggle read & process. The policies we pay into for a rainy day, are not there to support us. No wonder we are in the 🛁 😭thinking our families are better without us. /13

…by your neurologist. If you can’t afford said OOP treatment and don’t do it, LTD the floor above the cafeteria, will boot you from your policy because you didn’t follow your doctors prescribed orders or because LC is psychosomatic. And so this is what my painting represents./12

So here’s my evaluation of dealing with an insurance company and having LC (my lawyers will probably prefer this to be deleted).
On one floor, they will deny you for life insurance for LC because you are too big a risk. Across the hall they will deny coverage for cog therapy prescribed …/11

My LTD company has decided that my LC is “psychosomatic” so now I’m appealing with a lawyer. Apparently I’m young in their eyes (50?!) and my policy is worth the “deny, delay, defend”tactic and there is no recourse for wrongful termination. It also doesn’t matter that I’m on SSDI. Fun times. /10

…hoping I can find research showing that cog therapy does help LC patients.

BTW, I now pay for cog therapy at a discounted OOP rate because my current insurance doesn’t cover it at all. Has anyone seen this research? 🧐 LMK 🙏🏻

Oh and the 2nd letter, my LTD company…/9

A week after I painted this, I received 2 letters in the mail, 1 again from my ins company denying my appeal to pay for my cog therapy as saying it can’t treat covid; which if I didn’t do, is grounds for my LTD to boot me. So I can pay $2k+ out of pocket or appeal again…/8

“Long Covid: Delay, Deny, Appeal, Repeat” by me, Sam Norpel (10/2024)

This painting features actual quotes from SSDI finding I’m disabled, to denial that I need cog therapy, to a new request for another neuro psych evaluation./7

Over & over. Standing over the counter, in the bathtub,planning, preparing, giving away items & finally hearing myself “Get help.”

In 1/2023, I let the trusted doctors know how badly I was doing, changed my meds, therapy weekly.

But the thoughts come back if I overdo it. I have to watch it. /6

I’m 2 years out from this from this daily torture but as I typed these words again this internal struggle came back like a tidal wave: “Failure.” “Hold On.” “You should be dead.” “Don’t give up.” “They don’t need you anymore.” “You are loved.” “You don’t do anything here.” “Hold on.”/5

These two versions of Sam are supposed to represent my internal struggle, the fight between these 2 me’s that I was hearing in my head. I had never experienced anything so irrational in my life as I did after the neuro inflammation from #LongCOVID. /4

DMing with a LC patient about our #LongCOVID #SuicidalIdeation inspired my next 🖼️.

“Long Covid: Suicidal Ideation ‘Thoughts in My Head’” by me, Sam Norpel (8/2024)./3

“Shattered Life: Long Covid” by me, Sam Norpel (February 2023)

I painted this explain to explain why even though I was physically better than a year prior, I was emotionally at my worst. Grieving the life I had lost, family & finances strained. I still find myself angry & grieving 2 years later. /2