A Friend for the Long Haul - A Long Covid Podcast 100% produced by a disabled Covid long hauler. If you'd like to support my work, please check out the following ways you can do so:
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Welcome to season 2 episode 12 of A Friend for the Long Haul - A Long COVID Podcast! This week's guest is Katie Drackert, who most of you will know as @kd_kinetic. Katie is the founder of Clear the Air ATX, a volunteer-led, community resource library that lends out air purifiers and other COVID mitigation tools for free to artists, musicians, and independent event producers in Austin, Texas - where I lived for many years and sadly had to leave due to my COVID experience.
In the pre-rona days, Katie primarily worked full time as a performance artist. When Omicron hit, things changed. In this episode, we discuss our personal experiences with chronic health issues, including long COVID, and the challenges we face managing our symptoms while advocating for ourselves and others. We share our experiences with medical treatments, their emotional impacts, and the importance of community support and self-care. The conversation also touches on our backgrounds - which are really similar despite our age difference (I am an old) as well as our many shared interests, and future plans for advocacy work and creative projects that we are both plotting.
By the end of this episode, I became fully obsessed with Katie, and I think you will, too! You can find out more about Katie's advocacy work in so many places! Check out: Co-created a Zine with The Sick Times, Featured in BioWorld Med Tech, Teen Vogue, CBS Austin - Mask Bans, CBS Austin - Homeless Camping Ban, Texas Observer, Spectrum Local News, YES! Magazine, 48 Hills,