Dawson's Creek writer Heidi Ferrer died by suicide on May 26, reports Deadline. Her husband, Nick Guthe, told the outlet that Ferrer took her own life following "an unremitting battle with long-haul COVID-19." She was 50 years old.
Guthe initially shared the new via Facebook post in the early hours of May 27. He wrote that Ferrer underwent a "13-month battle" with long-haul COVID. "Anyone who knew her knew she was a fighter and she fought this insidious monster as it slowly took her from us."
Ferrer, who was also a member of the Writers Guild of America, wrote a lengthy blog post about her experience dealing with both COVID-19 and long-haul COVID. "The monster is real and it came for me," she wrote in the post, dated September 2020. "Recovering from Covid-19 has been one of the hardest things I've ever gone through and I've been through a lot."
She revealed she began feeling symptoms of COVID-19 in April 2020, which presented as "odd feelings in my feet-a strange coldness-an awful crawling sensation," she wrote. She brushed that off until she got "unmistakable COVID toes" in May, though she tested negative for the virus.
In June, Ferrer said she became "suddenly disabled and bedridden," and she experienced "fatigue and many flu-like symptoms." Her foot and ankle pain remained the worst, she wrote, describing it as "stabbing knives, pins and needles, a deep ache that nothing could touch." She ranked her pain as a 9 on a scale of 10, and wrote that "one night, multiple veins burst in my foot."
Ferrer shared that it took her a long time to reveal she had been suffering from COVID-19. "It felt like a stigma, and even I didn't know what was happening to me," she wrote. She passed time, she added, by researching her condition and joining support groups filled with other COVID-19 long-haulers. (Note: Though Ferrer says she was never officially diagnosed with COVID, she shared that "a lot of us Long Haulers didn't test positive" for the virus.)
At her worst, Ferrer struggled to see a light at the end of the tunnel. "I told my husband that if I didn't get better, I did not want to live like this," she wrote. "I wasn't suicidal, I just couldn't see any quality of life long term and there was no end in sight."
She added that one of the "cruelest" things COVID did to her was take away her dreams. "I don't mean dreams in my sleep," she wrote. "I mean I completely stopped dreaming about my future because I couldn't picture it. It was a wall."
After months of "intermittent torture" and numerous doctors visits-many who weren't able to offer any answers-Ferrer said that she began to feel better in August 2020. "My slow walks felt better and better and my spirits soared," she wrote. "I had my trees back, something precious that had been ripped from me, the simple pleasure of a walk outside." Ferrer shared that she was finally feeling optimistic. "Covid wont' win," she wrote.
According to Deadline, by May 2021, Ferrer had become "bedridden and in constant physical pain," and was "suffering from severe neurological tremors and numerous other worsening symptoms."
In his Facebook post to share the news of Ferrer's death, Guthe also wrote that she was an organ donor. And in a follow-up post on May 28, which would have been Ferrer's 51st birthday, Guthe shared that "in typical Heidi fashion, she will give life to two people today as her gift."
Ferrer is survived by her husband, along with their 13-year-old son, Bexon. The family said that contributions can be made in Ferrer's name to the Infantile Scoliosis Outreach Program, which helped treat Bexon's spine when he was a child.
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