Mallory Stanislawczyk was hesitant to make the call. She hadn’t spoken to her friend for years. But the friend, who gets around in a wheelchair, was the only person the 34-year-old nurse practitioner could think of who would understand her questions. About being ready to accept help. About using a wheelchair. And about the new identity her battle with long COVID had thrust on her.
“I think she is the first person I said to, ‘I’m disabled now’,” Stanislawczyk recalled telling the friend. “'And I’m working on accepting that’.”
The coronavirus pandemic has created a mass-disabling event that experts liken to HIV, polio or World War II, with millions suffering the long-term effects of infection with the coronavirus. Many have found their lives dramatically changed and are grappling with what it means to be disabled.
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