My dad had one at 48, and watching how quickly his quality of life drastically decreased is exactly why I am so careful regarding Covid. Nobody should ever have to suffer with what he did. Story time? He had a heart attack in the part of the heart nicknamed the widow-maker. 1/

He had lived a pretty sedentary lifestyle, was a smoker from his teen years like many/most people of his generation, and my mom warned him that he would develop blood clots due to those two major factors, and then one day, he would move around a lot, and they would dislodge. 2/

Unfortunately, my mom was an accurate fortune-teller, and when he tried to dig up the roots of a tree we got cut down in our front yard, he came in with textbook signs of a heart attack. I remember going upstairs and grabbing a washcloth, putting it under a cold faucet and- 3/

- bringing it to him to put on his forehead. My parents had old nitroglycerin tablets from my dad‘s late mom, and they dissolved one sublingually under his tongue. I know that’s what saved him, though the paramedics chastised my mom for doing that (both parents pharmacists). 4/

The ambulance got there, and he was taken away. I was taken to the neighbor’s house to play with their kids. I was 5. I didn’t remember this, but my mom later told me that I was convinced he was dead. After that, things changed. A neighbor taught me how to ride my bike. 5/

For a long while after, he couldn’t do any physical activity. My dad couldn’t carry me anymore. I don’t think he ever did again? He was so scared for his health all the time. The doctors told him that his heart was at 30% strength/capacity. His life truly was never the same. 6/

That’s JUST his first heart attack. I could talk about his strokes when I was 13 and 14. How much those affected his brain. How he couldn’t remember my name for the first one. His peripheral vision and temper were different after the second one. He truly just got more and- 7/

more chronically unwell and effectively bedridden after every single time a blood clot entered a vital organ of his. I lost my early-life dad to his health issues nineteen YEARS before he died. He lost more and more of his life to chronic illnesses and blood tests and- 8/

an ever-expanding medical pharmacy in his OWN home to keep him alive. And ALL of this was PRE COVID. His four year death anniversary was just this past month. He died from a heart attack. His third. Now here’s where Covid comes into all of this: 9/

Covid has always caused blood clots. This is something we’ve known since at least 2020. Covid has ALSO caused so many heart attacks in young, HEALTHY people. Athletes who train every day have passed out due to Covid. This happened in the RECENT Olympics! Some even have died. 10/

I’ll always say how important it is to mask for everyone’s health preservation. It’s the moral, right thing to do. People who think it won’t disable them or cause heart attacks or strokes have no idea what horrors can come from them. Lifelong, incurable horrors, I’ve seen. 11/

From age five, I always wondered what my dad would have been like if he had the strength to be like so many of the other dads. To be able to pick me up and hold me as a child. When you lose parts of yourself, the people who love you lose those parts, too- your potential. 12/

I watched that man suffer for two decades. My mom and I both suffered for two decades, too- STILL suffer. It’s not worth getting Covid. Blood clots WILL be tragic, traumatic, life-ruiners, and it’s soul crushing to watch people I care about- 13/

run headfirst into lifelong health issues while I stress SO much about being the unlikable nag any time I mention Covid stuff. But it’s like??? How do I delicately navigate that line??? Fuck if I know! I’ve been autistic with social anxiety since birth so it’s not like 14/

I ever knew how to be naturally likable, even without the n95 elephant in the room on my face, effectively othering me. Anyway, all this to say that the more the world listens to disabled people at large, the less individual disabled people need to remind folks that- 15/

their lives are worth living, absolutely, but doing so while taking Covid precautions is the BEST way to PROLONG that quality of life so you CAN do all the fun stuff you love doing for decades more than you would if you have a heart attack in your 40’s or 30’s or 20’s. 16/

If Covid causes you to have a heart attack or a stroke, there’s no promising that you’ll be able to do all the fun things you want to do. or to be able to have a job to afford it. Govt. disability pays like shit. 17/

The same govt that was “encouraged” that it’s “mostly disabled people dying”. You can still ~live your life~ in a high-quality mask with up-to-date boosters. Multiple layers of precaution are best. Live your life *well* so you CAN live *that* life for a long time. 18/

I wish people knew what a gift it is to have a healthy body and a healthy mind. Even just *relatively* healthy can move mountains comparatively. It makes a hell of a difference to be able to do such simple things that people take for granted every single day of their lives. 19/

I’ll leave this thread on this final note: I wonder if other people saw what I saw my whole life through my eyes, would they mask like me? I’ll never know. I can just hope they’ll trust me. Believe me. Listen. Even care enough that it matters to me to do it regardless. 20/end

@threadreaderapp unroll pls ❤️