Support Katie during a Long Covid health crisis

Hello! We all have an opportunity to support real life angel and icon, Katie Drackert, as they navigate a really challenging month of overlapping health crises due to Long Covid. Your support would be so meaningful and helpful!!

If you don’t know Katie, they are a queer performance artist in Austin, TX who has had to give up their performing career due to Long Covid. They have worked tirelessly, for YEARS, helping the Austin community as well as the larger disability and Long Covid community: they founded Clear the Air ATX and run a free lending library of air purifiers so that others don’t get Covid. You can often catch them using their slow cooker to make cute and nutritious meals for the Austin free fridge. And when they’re not doing all this, they’re testifying at FDA panels and educating community leaders and the media about the urgency of Covid safety and the growing disability crisis around Long Covid. All this while working their hybrid job and navigating Long Covid!!!!

It is now our turn to show up for Katie the way they have shown up for us.

What happened:

Katie was managing their Long Covid and other disabilities well up until the end of August, when they experienced an energy crash and an intensification of their LC symptoms. Making matters worse, they also began experiencing an endometriosis flare, causing a worsening of the LC crash as well as intense pain, fatigue, and brain fog.

10 days into this combined crash and flare, they unfortunately contracted food poisoning from take-out (since they were unable to cook for themself at this time). Because of LC, their body was not able to recover in the normal amount of time, making this food poisoning episode extreme and prolonged: it lasted 15 days, during which time they had to visit the ER twice and attend 5 separate medical appointments in between extreme bodily symptoms associated with the food poisoning. They were unable to sleep more than 4 hours per night nor hold any food down.

This is when things reached their worst: In a fatigued state, Katie accidentally switched to a new bottle of one of their regular medications, not realizing that the prescription was from an outdated attempt at upping their dose earlier this year. This outdated medication was regular release, not extended release. For 3 days, Katie took this incorrect medication and experienced what we now know is a common side effect: hypomania. For someone with LC, hypomania burns through already-depleted energy reserves and causes extreme PEM crashes. This is where Katie is now.

To summarize:

In the last 5 weeks, Katie has experienced:

Impact:

The result of this is that Katie has been unable to work their full schedule. Though they tried as much as possible to work through this crisis, they unfortunately missed 10 days of work and now cannot afford many of their expenses. They live alone and do not have financial support from a partner and minimal support from family. But they do have us! :)

Here are the expenses from this series of medical crises, as well as the expenses that cannot be covered due to how much work was missed:

TOTAL: $3,013

Ask:

Please contribute what you can so that Katie can cover these expenses. Katie is a cherished member of our community, always going out of their way to support others as much as they can. It’s their turn to receive support, and I want us all to show up in the ways we can.

Thank you so much!

* * *

‍ Who am I?

My name is Emily Dupree and I am a friend of Katie’s and the founder of Clean Air Club . We know each other through clean air and Covid advocacy work. Once all of the funds have been transferred, I will post a screenshot here for transparency.

Thank you for giving what you can!