A priest, a police officer, and a politician — each is living with long COVID in 2026

On Jan. 1, Kate Harmon Siberine marked four years living with long COVID.

“I really wish I could tell you that things were drastically improved,” Siberine said. “Unfortunately, that has not been the case for me.”

Most people who contract COVID-19 recover from their symptoms within days or weeks. However, for some people, the illness turns from a viral infection into a long-term chronic condition called long COVID. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines it as a chronic illness that follows COVID-19 infection persisting for at least three months.

In early 2025, Siberine was one of three New Hampshire long COVID patients who spoke with the Bulletin about their ongoing experience with the condition. Now, roughly one year later, the Bulletin has reconnected with all three to get an update on their conditions.

The type and intensity of symptoms patients experience vary widely, as do the outcomes.

For example, Siberine said her condition hasn’t changed much since she last spoke to the Bulletin. Meanwhile, Nenia Ballard, of Canaan, has seen her condition worsen, and Merrimack’s Wendy Thomas has experienced some improvement.

Perhaps the most consistent experience long COVID patients face is the uncertainty that comes with having a medical condition doctors don’t yet fully understand.

In the past year, the three long COVID patients have sought avenues to move forward in life despite their diagnoses.

Pastor of the Disabled Body of Christ

Siberine, who lives in Goffstown, was an episocal priest with congregations in Concord and Franklin. Since contracting long COVID, she experiences brain fog, fainting, and muscle weakness. She now uses a wheelchair and is mostly bedbound (though she said she’s been able to move around slightly more in the past year). She had to step away from her preaching duties in February 2024 because of her long COVID symptoms. In the year since she last spoke to the Bulletin about her health, Siberine said little has changed.

“My symptoms and their severity remain the same,” she said. “But I would say what has improved is I’ve learned a lot more about how to pace and manage so that I can prioritize the things that are most important to me and rest really well, both in anticipation and recovery.”

In the past year, Siberine said she’s tried at least 10 new medications, but none have made a substantial difference. Now, she said she’s “just waiting for the science and research to catch up.” However, she’s concerned recent political developments have hampered those efforts.

2025 was a tumultuous year for American biomedical research. When President Donald Trump returned to the White House, among his first actions was to make dramatic budget cuts to the National Institutes of Health, the world’s largest funder of biomedical research, and other research funders. The cuts, doled out over the course of months, targeted research the administration saw as too focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as research related to COVID-19. 

Officials said at the time that the government will “no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.” The Trump administration also closed the federal Office for Long COVID Research and Practice, an agency that coordinated efforts across different federal health agencies to understand, treat, and potentially cure the condition. Trump also, via a February executive order, dissolved the Health Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Long COVID, a move the president said reduced unnecessary bureaucracy.

In February 2025, shortly after first speaking to the Bulletin, Siberine suffered an ocular shingles infection related to her long COVID. She said her condition — as well as a potential long COVID medication she was trying at the time — suppressed her immune system and made her more susceptible. The infection brought lesions and pain around her eyes and nose, and put her in the hospital for almost a week. She still experiences some lingering pain from the ordeal today. Separately, she suffered medication-resistant thrush — a fungal infection in the mouth that results in lesions on the tongue and inner cheeks — and is still dealing with related digestive issues.

“It’s a real challenge, as someone with a somewhat experimentally treated disease,” she said. “You want to sort of try anything that might work, because you want to get better, but you also run the risk of there being some really nasty side effects from just not being the research there to know how a new medication might interact.”

When she last spoke to the Bulletin, Siberine was struggling with the loss of her role as a preacher. However, in October, she began leading a virtual church service on TikTok live for people with disabilities and chronic illnesses who can’t attend church services in person.

“That community has really grown in some incredible ways,” she said. “I think everyone needs community. And for those of us for whom COVID has already been really damaging, or for whom continued infection is really risky, having a space where we can be at church and not have to worry about making sure that everybody present has an N-95 (mask) on is great.”

She said it’s turned into a global online community. On a recent Wednesday, over 200 people tuned in, and her TikTok account has garnered more than 37,000 followers. She calls the service “the Disabled Body of Christ.”

“We have people who join from Manchester, and we have people who join from Europe and from Japan,” she said. “So it’s housed here in New Hampshire, but really grown to a more global community.”

Miss Wheelchair New Hampshire

Where Siberine’s condition has changed little over the past year, Ballard, the former Canaan police officer, has experienced a worsening of her symptoms.

Ballard, who contracted COVID-19 in 2021 while the pandemic was still raging, said she experiences brain fog, shortness of breath, increased heart rate, and most notably fatigue. She left her work as a police officer because she didn’t feel safe doing such a dangerous job with her long COVID symptoms. But last year when she spoke to the Bulletin, she was still able to work part time as a grant writer for the Vermont Institute of Natural Science. However, by March 2025, her symptoms had worsened and Ballard had to quit working entirely, she said.

Ballard, who now uses a wheelchair, said she’s tried just about everything.

“Everything they can think of, we’ve kind of exhausted,” she said. “Nothing has really worked in terms of giving me a lot of relief.”

She’s resorted to doing experimental treatments and has now participated in several clinical trials. For example, she participated in one study at Dartmouth Health where researchers were trying to determine if Paxlovid, which was developed to treat short-term COVID-19 infections, can also help long COVID patients. It’s a double-blind trial, which means half the participants receive a placebo and the other half receive the experimental medication, and a few months after the experiment she learned she was given the placebo. Still, she’s hopeful her participation helps researchers find answers for her and others. She began a new clinical trial with Massachusetts General Hospital this month where researchers, suspecting that long COVID is connected to the gut, are testing a celiac medication called Larazotide.

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“That’s kind of where I’m at as far as just doing experiments,” Ballard said. “And that’s kind of a scary place to be, because you’re just kind of trying things out and hoping. But at the same time, nothing else is working either, so that’s worth a shot.”

Both Ballard and Siberine receive treatment at the Post Acute Covid Syndrome Clinic in Lebanon’s Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, which was founded in spring 2021 and has treated over 800 patients in New Hampshire and Vermont. The clinic specializes in long COVID treatment and facilitates much of the experimental treatments Ballard and Siberine are receiving.

However, over the past year, long COVID clinics nationwide have been closing. While exact figures for how many clinics shut down nationwide are difficult to ascertain, major clinics in North Carolina and Hawaii underscored a retreat in care. Experts say federal funding cuts, burnout among providers, and directives from hospital executives who want to focus on more treatable conditions are to blame for these closures. Dartmouth’s clinic remains open.

Ballard said the hardest part has been “that there is no path that someone can say, ‘This is how you get better.’”

“We have so much knowledge about so many different things,” she continued. “If you get diagnosed tomorrow with cancer, they can tell you, ‘These are the things that we’re going to do for you, and this is how we’re this is how we’re going to fight this, and this is how we’re going to take care of you.’ But on this particular journey, so much of it is just like, ‘We don’t know what we’re doing.’”

She’s frustrated that “no doctor will sit down with me and commit to an answer because they don’t know either, and nobody wants to be wrong.”

“And I definitely think that the political climate doesn’t help,” Ballard added. “I think there are still a lot of people who want to make this a political issue. They want to question what actually causes it. They want to make it about vaccines. They want to make it about, you know, whatever it is that fits their political views. And that’s not helpful to me either.”

Ballard said quitting her part-time job was a difficult decision.

“Having to show up consistently and put in even a part-time amount of hours, the toll that that was having on my body was too much,” she said. “I was crashing and not being able to recover, and obviously that wasn’t helping with my recovery.”

Ballard said the void created by leaving work has been challenging as well.

“Trying to find that balance of recovery, but also still having some sort of quality of life has been really difficult because mental health is still really important too,” she said. “You can’t just do nothing. You can’t just have nothing to look forward to, because that’s not good for your mental health either.”

To combat this, Ballard has become involved in advocacy work. When she first began using a wheelchair because of her long COVID, one of the first things she realized was how different her clothes fit.

“I was having a hard time with clothing once I started using the wheelchair and was really frustrated with how hard it was to wear some of my favorite clothes,” she said. “And the difference between those same exact outfits on someone who’s standing and someone who’s seated in a wheelchair was just night and day.”

Ballard began reviewing clothes online with a wheelchair user in mind.

“Things like the length of the clothes, because, especially with dresses and things like that, if it’s too long, it’ll get caught up in the front wheels,” she said. “If it’s got too much volume, it can get caught up in the side wheels, both of those things can be dangerous. Also, the fit of the top. Someone like me, who is almost six feet tall when I was standing, I never really had to worry about if someone was looking down my shirt when I was standing. But when I’m seated and I’m in a conversation with someone who’s now towering over me, they can see directly down the top of my blouse or the top of my dress, and that’s a huge, huge thing to think about when you’re getting dressed.”

An organization called Miss Wheelchair USA, which seeks to honor those who advocate for accessibility, inclusion, and disability rights, caught notice of her videos, and she’s since been named Miss Wheelchair New Hampshire.

“When you get sick and you have to kind of reshape your dreams and your goals and your expectations for your day-to-day life, your world gets smaller,” she said. “And you do have to find different things to look forward to, and you want to still find things that you can feel a sense of accomplishment in. I used to find that in the work that I did and giving back to my community through being a police officer, and then I couldn’t do that anymore, so I had to find it other places. Volunteering is a great way to do that, but even volunteering still requires you to be able to show up at specific times, to do things in specific ways that I can’t do anymore. So this advocacy, because so much of it I can do virtually, I can do it when I’m feeling up to it, I can film just short videos when I’m able to, it gives me a way where I can still feel like I’m contributing.”

A Merrimack state representative

One of the three long COVID patients the Bulletin spoke to in 2025 is a state representative. Thomas, who represents Merrimack in the New Hampshire House, has seen improvement in her condition but some symptoms persist. 

“My gut will never be the same,” Thomas said. “I can’t figure out what foods irritate me, but if I eat the wrong food, I’m out for a while with cramping and diarrhea, all that kind of stuff.”

In addition to digestive issues, Thomas said her sense of taste and smell has been permanently altered.

“I can taste some things, but I know I’m not tasting it correctly or smelling it correctly,” she said. “I still have to send food over to my husband and say ‘Does this smell bad?’ because I can’t tell if food is rotten or not.”

Still, her symptoms were mild in comparison to others and never required her to stop working or use a wheelchair. Thomas sees her primary care physician in Peterborough for treatment.

“I was one of the lucky ones because he believed in 2020 that I was having severe, ongoing symptoms from a COVID infection,” Thomas said. “A lot of doctors back then just didn’t believe it. They thought people were being hysterical, or they were trumping up symptoms in order to get medication or something, but he believed me from day one.”

Indeed, in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was the Patient-Led COVID-19 Research Collaborative rather than doctors that first examined long COVID — sometimes referred to at the time as “long haul COVID” — in earnest. In fact, outspoken online patient advocacy was what pushed many doctors to take a closer look at the illness. A 2021 paper in the journal Social Science and Medicine argues that “Long Covid has a strong claim to be the first illness created through patients finding one another on Twitter.”

Thomas has also dealt with other issues. She has Lyme disease and said the symptoms got much worse after her COVID-19 infection, but have since calmed down. In 2022, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and believes that long COVID may have exacerbated her cancer, though she hopes more research will emerge clarifying that.

Now, Siberine, Ballard, and Thomas are all trying to move forward with their illness in the face of uncertainty over treatment and the persistent societal misconceptions about their condition.

“I think there’s still a lot of people who are of the opinion that the pandemic is over and we’ve moved on, and COVID is behind us,” Ballard said. “And they’re not thinking about all of the people who are still being affected by this.”