Long Haul COVID Has Hit My Family Hard

March 3, 2025

Here's an update on this GoFundMe, I set up for my son Morgan Hale. Over the past month, my son's family was hit by another hardship. Cassandra, Morgan's wife, was hospitalized in great pain. It turned out to be her gallbladder. Many of us have had to have our gallbladders removed & I can hear you thinking, "It wasn't that big a deal!" and usually, that's true.

But when doctors opened Cassandra up, they discovered her gallbladder was gangrene! They told Morgan, "We can't trust her when she tells us how much pain she's in. She had to be suffering way more than she was letting us know!"

Cassandra's a mom. We moms often ignore our pain while we go on being MOM. I imagine that's what Cassandra did. She is also a Physical Therapist & the only bread winner in her family so she thought she had to keep working, no matter how much she hurt. Without her income, there was nothing.

Now Cassandra is out of work for at least six weeks while she recovers from her gall bladder surgery. I wish I could help her, but I have my own financial crises. If there is anyone who can help my son & his family, thank you. I understand why so many more of us CANNOT help. #TraitorTrump isn't making life in the US any easier.

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I am Deborah Lawrence Hale. I'm a retired disabled widow & not financially able on my own to help my son, Morgan Hale, care for his family while he is suffering Long COVID. (I have also heard it called Long Haul COVID.) Morgan has written the following with a little help from the women in his life:

In January 2022, I contracted both Covid-19 and RSV which put me down for about a month. Since then, I’ve been dealing with progressively worsening symptoms of long Covid. It started with simple exhaustion and shortness of breath, but for the past months has graduated to asthma, chronic fatigue, and “brain fog”. This last is the worst symptom because it leads to severe memory and communication issues. I keep forgetting words, events, and losing my place in the middle of tasks. I’ve developed a periodic stutter, which I never had before.

I’ve also started to have daily headaches that worsen any time I have a heavier cognitive load. So, things like reading, crossword puzzles, and strategy board games have become severely challenging to the point where I have to lie down afterward.

I have been out of work on medical leave since Thanksgiving, 2022. The leave started when I realized I couldn’t keep up with my tasks and I kept making mistakes. My whole job is talking with students and problem-solving, and those are the two areas that have been most severely hit. Since then, I’ve had a wide range of tests and appointments, but little improvement. Despite this, I need to go back to work no matter my condition, because my leave has run out and I’m no longer getting paid.

On the doctor’s suggestion, I’m hoping to return to a half-time schedule that can build back up to full-time, but I have no idea how long that will take. Even writing texts is exhausting to me. During that time, I will not be getting my full paycheck, and I have bills to pay and a child to feed.

I have no idea how or if I will recover. The loss could be temporary or permanent. Nobody knows enough about Covid and its aftereffects to say for sure. I just know that, right now, I can’t write, I can’t play games with my family, and I don’t really know how I’m going to work when cooking familiar meals from a recipe taxes my mental faculties and writing this took the help of my wife and mother!

PS: This is Deborah Lawrence Hale, Morgan's mother, again. This GoFundMe was created two years ago. It is now February 2025, and Morgan is not getting any better. Since writing the above, he had to leave his job as an Advisor in the Anthropology Department at the University of Washington. Obviously, his & his family's financial situation has worsened. I am not in any situation to help him & he is obviously cannot help me! All I can do is ask, if you are able to contribute anything to aid Morgan & his family, please do. If you are unable to help financially, would you please share this GoFundMe with others so, perhaps, it might cross paths with somebody else who can help financially? Thank you very much.