Sam Norpel

@samnorpel.bsky.social

47 Followers 75 Following

Wife, Mom, Former Executive, now #disabled by #LongCOVID. When I feel up to it, I try to use #ArtTherapy 🎨 to express what life is like as a LC patient 🖼️ & raise awareness. I also paint flowers 💐🌺🌻 to bring a little joy.

Sam’s LongCovid painting show words from the denial letter from her healthcare insurance company for cog therapy saying it was exploratory for LC, words from the SSDI assessment saying I have impairment and can’t manage my finances, words from my cog therapist saying I’m impaired, to a letter saying they can’t make a decision if I’m able to do a job that would pay me 80% of my csuite salary. The painting is a sketch of a woman with headphones and blond hair with her arms crossed leaning over stacks of papers and folders for all the various providers (mayo, Penn) and insurance companies (guardian horizon) and SSDI, Medicare.
A depiction of 2 versions of sam at different stages of LC one with unhighlighted dirty blonde long hair, headphones and sunglasses and negative words like “they don’t need you,” “just die,” etc and the other is a sam smiling with headphones around her neck not needing sunglasses, wearing ear buds to block sound still, and words saying “hold on,” “they still love uou” etc. these two represent my internal struggle and the 2 mes fighting myself about deciding to kill myself or not because I believe my family would be better off without me.
Sketch-like painting in gray tones of a Women in the bathtub hugging her knees , head on her knees so she is “in a ball”. Cut pictures and business items into chard-like pieces representing glass shattered of her life destroyed by COVID pasted all over her body and in the water. Tears falling down her knees and thighs into the bath water.