Gregory T. Cushman is an associate professor of international environmental history at the University of Kansas. He contracted Covid-19 in August 2020 and, since then, has coped with symptoms of long Covid. This is his account of his experience, as told to Megan Zahneis. (The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.)
The first week of classes at the University of Kansas in August 2020, I, beyond a reasonable doubt, contracted Covid in the classroom.
Covid has so many different symptoms associated with it. I especially had low oxygen levels, great difficulty breathing. The worst of all was just this soul-killing, unrelenting fatigue.
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Gregory T. Cushman is an associate professor of international environmental history at the University of Kansas. He contracted Covid-19 in August 2020 and, since then, has coped with symptoms of long Covid. This is his account of his experience, as told to Megan Zahneis. (The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.)
The first week of classes at the University of Kansas in August 2020, I, beyond a reasonable doubt, contracted Covid in the classroom.
Covid has so many different symptoms associated with it. I especially had low oxygen levels, great difficulty breathing. The worst of all was just this soul-killing, unrelenting fatigue.
It was like having mono forever. Even now, I have days where I’ll be sitting in a chair and I just can’t get out of the chair. My legs won’t do what I ask them to. It feels like getting ready to jump off a cliff.
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Sometimes, I would seem to be feeling quite a bit better, for days or even weeks, and then it would come back with a vengeance and be as bad as ever. One of those incidents was Christmastime of 2020, four months after I’d initially gotten Covid. I was so physically exhausted on Christmas Day that my kids basically beat down the door, asking, “When are you coming down, Papi? It’s 1 p.m. We really would like to open presents. Hope you’re OK.” The fatigue was so awful that one of them had to help me downstairs and I just sat in the chair while they had their version of Christmas together, which I could barely participate in.
You also realize, when you feel good, how much you’ve lost.
Gregory Cushman
Then there are the neurological issues, especially brain fog and difficulty paying attention, finding words. I’m a historian by trade. I have a reputation as being a really good presenter, at least. I couldn’t think of the most basic words, the names of people that are close friends of mine.
For academics, our jobs and our lives are premised on our ability to think clearly, to think quickly, to do so in a focused way, to be able to speak, to be able to write. Post-Covid disrupts our focus and our thoughts in ways that are extremely discouraging, because if you don’t have this capacity, you’re done, it’s over. You have to rethink what you’re doing with your life, and I had moments — many moments — when I was fearful that I would have to end my career if this didn’t go away. Then I would have a good day, and have the hope that maybe I’ll be turning the corner. It was always such a tease that way.
Obviously when the symptoms return, that’s both debilitating and discouraging. You have the expectation that they won’t last forever, that they’ll go away again, which gives you hope. But then when you feel better again, it’s discouraging and depressing in its own right because you don’t know how bad the symptoms will be, when and if they return. And you also realize, when you feel good, how much you’ve lost.
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It’s really difficult to predict and plan, for example, to go on a research trip or to a conference. Doing collaborative projects, that’s where it’s the most challenging, where it’s not just your schedule, it’s a whole research team’s schedule that we need to account for.
I can’t emphasize enough how helpful the chair and director of the two programs that I worked for were in trying to figure out not only how to help me get through this, but also in making sure classes are taught and projects are run and things like that.
On the other hand, Covid and my experience of long Covid brought to a head a number of ways in which the life situation and work situation of people employed at KU is not just not optimal, but intolerable. We were told so many different times in so many different ways during the course of the pandemic that we simply do not matter much to the mission, everyday operations, and future of the university. My partner, my oldest child, and I all got sick because I had to teach in person, and we were never counted officially by KU as getting sick at all. The threat of post-Covid was never acknowledged at higher levels, much less the sacrifices so many of us made to keep the university operating. Message received. Loud and clear. I have to say it was a significant factor in me looking for employment elsewhere.
Gregory Cushman, international environmental historian Ash Ponders for The Chronicle
This idea that we’re going to continue plowing on like nothing happened works for some, but it treats others like they’re speed bumps in the middle of a parking lot to get run over. I feel like I just got pushed aside in terms of career development. I’m in the middle of my career, at least by conventional expectations. I’d like to get promoted, like to finish my book, to get these articles that I’ve been working on out there.
This is life-changing, and it’s symbolic of a situation that’s been affecting a lot of other people with related struggles for a long time. There needs to be a reckoning about what it means for colleges and universities to provide a space for those with health struggles and those with disabilities to be full, contributing members of their communities.
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I’m in a tenured position. I am a white male who’s relatively affluent. I had a spouse who didn’t get nearly as sick as me and was able to care for me and sacrificed things in her own life and career in order to do that. My children are all teenagers and can take care of themselves. I can’t even begin to contemplate what it would be like for someone early-career, especially for a mother with children who are before school age. To deal with the difficulties that there are, being a parent as an academic, and then to have Covid and post-Covid thrown on top of you at this extraordinarily difficult moment of one’s life. ... It makes me tearful thinking about it because I couldn’t handle it. How does someone survive that? People do. But my situation could have been so much more difficult.
What are universities going to do to mitigate this problem, not only for the people who have gotten sick and who are continually struggling, but also for the programs of which we’re integral parts? I kept teaching some classes even though I was sick because there was no one else to teach the class. It’s me or no one.
I’m able to continue doing the fundamentals of the job to a satisfactory level, or even a level that exceeds expectations. But I have a lot less energy and focus to carry on with the rest of my life, and that pisses me off. Like so many academics, a lot of my identity is tied around my work, around my research, around my teaching. But that’s not the end-all, be-all of life.
I tried so hard to keep up with previous expectations. I don’t want to blame myself, but it was a mistake to try to continue. People didn’t say, ‘Hey, don’t worry about that.’ They still need you to follow through no matter what. And I gave in to those expectations and failed.
I was given partial [Family and Medical Leave Act] leave for the fall 2020 semester, when I had the acute symptoms. In spring 2021, I had a sabbatical that I was hoping I would be able to use to complete research, but I spent a whole lot of that time sick. In fall 2021, when I was required to come back to work after sabbatical, I had to go through the [Americans With Disabilities Act] to obtain an accommodation, not only to get some relief from work, but just to be given the right to teach online.
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I could harbor my energy up to the time that my graduate seminar started on Zoom — cut corners a little bit on prepping for the reading and discussion, and grade things more lightly than I would typically do. I couldn’t talk as much in classes because of the breathing difficulties. If I talked for too long, I would actually vomit. Students understood that I was ill and were forgiving and empathetic.
By prioritizing a specific thing such as showing up to teach for a class, one could harbor the energy and the efforts that were needed to do that. But it’s like a tank of gas that only holds an eighth of a tank. When that gas is gone, it takes takes days, sometimes a week to recover. The same thing with research; I would invest a lot of time and energy in writing things up, run out of gas, and not be able to recover then and go back to it the next day. Everything was so much more difficult on the whole because of the lack of physical resources that one has in order to continue. One day you’re like, “Hey, I feel pretty good, so let’s try to get back to things.” Then you expend that energy and find yourself back the way you were two days previously when you were feeling bad. It’s this constant cycle.
One of the things about long Covid that’s so challenging is that it often ebbs and flows, in big waves and long ebbs. You’ll have a time when you are feeling better and then the the symptoms can come back as bad as ever again. I’ve had at least, say, three weeks now where I’ve definitely been feeling quite a bit better. So I’m hopeful that I’ve genuinely turned a corner here.
I’m moving on to the University of Arizona in the fall. I get to push the reset button and get the proverbial fresh start.
Note: The University of Kansas characterized the information provided by Cushman as “false,” but didn’t specifically respond to allegations that he had contracted Covid in the university’s classroom or that it had failed to include him in its official count of those who had been sickened. Its statement went on to say: “In summer 2020, the university articulated the importance of offering in-person learning, when possible, to meet the expectation that our on-campus students — particularly first-year students — would have a majority of their courses in person that fall semester, but there were not broad mandates for instructors to teach classes in person. Many classes remained in a hybrid or online format. KU has worked throughout the pandemic with our Pandemic Medical Advisory Team to shape decisions regarding campus operations in a way that prioritizes health and safety.” The university said changes included required masking, improved filtration, and distanced seating in lecture halls and classrooms.
Megan Zahneis, a senior reporter for The Chronicle, writes about faculty and the academic workplace. Follow her on Twitter @meganzahneis, or email her at megan.zahneis@chronicle.com.