How ‘Medical Gaslighting’ Ignores Black Women With Long COVID

A Facebook group of Black women dealing with long COVID describe different symptoms but the same story: clinicians telling them it’s all in their heads. By Jennifer Porter Gore Originally appeared in Word in Black In March 2020, Margot Gage Witvliet had managed to board one of the last flights leaving Amsterdam to return to her family in Houston, Texas. It was very good luck: as the COVID-19 pandemic raced around the globe, states, localities and entire countries were closing down, and airlines were stopping their operations.& A university professor and social epidemiologist, Gage Witvliet understood exactly what it meant that a new virus was making people around the world very sick—and in many cases killing them. What she didn’t know was that, 10 days after that flight, she would get the flu-like symptoms of COVID infection.   “I am not someone who has struggled with a chronic illness, in fact I have rarely been sick with the common cold or flu. I have never broken a bone and I had no comorbidities,” she says. “I have two healthy children and before COVID-19, I was a hands-on active mother. Women in my family have consistently lived into triple digits. By the...