'Dawson's Creek' Writer Heidi Ferrer Dead By Suicide At 50 After Year-Long Battle With COVID-19
Dawson's Creek writer Heidi Ferrer has died by suicide at the age of 50 following a lengthy battle with long-haul COVID-19.
Her husband, filmmaker Nick Guthe, confirmed that Ferrer — who also worked on ABC's Wasteland — died on May 26 via his late wife's Twitter account. She had been fighting COVID-19 for more than a year.
Ferrer was reportedly diagnosed with the virus in late April 2020 but her symptoms got worse as time went on. She was said to be bedridden for a few months after she first fell ill and was suffering from severe fatigue and neurological tremors.
"I had fatigue and many flu-like symptoms, but the foot and ankle pain was the worst, stabbing knives, pins and needles, a deep ache that nothing could touch," she admitted in a blog post in September.
"In my darkest moments, I told my husband that if I didn’t get better, I did not want to live like this. I wasn’t suicidal, I just couldn’t see any quality of life long term and there was no end in sight," Ferrer wrote.
"One of the cruelest things Covid did to me was to take away my ability to have dreams. I don’t mean dreams in my sleep, I mean I completely stopped dreaming about my future because I couldn’t picture it. It was a wall," she added later in the post.
Last month, Ferrer reportedly became bedridden again. Her husband, Nick, dubbed long-haul COVID "a public health crisis that must be addressed quickly."
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Ferrer was celebrated for selling her first spec, The C Word, to Oscar-winning producer Arnold Kopelson without having a college degree.
She is survived by her husband, 13-year-old son, mother and two sisters. "My beautiful angel, Heidi, passed over tonight after a 13 month battle with Long Haul Covid. She was an amazing mother. She fought this insidious disease with the same ferocity she lived with. I love you forever and I'll see you down the road," Nick shared on social media.
Fans reached out to offer their condolences. "I was just reading Heidi’s story and your story and…just, wow. It seems ineffable; what you, as a family, must have gone through this year. I’m just so sorry. I don’t understand life sometimes but I do know her life meant something and the ripple of her existence lives on," one user wrote.
"This breaks my heart but she fought a good fight. May her soul rest in peace. Condolences to the family," another said.
A third user wrote, "This just caught me in my tracks. Many of us are going on business as usual and I hear something like this, I can't believe that you, your daughter, your family were going through this for over a year. She radiates peace and beauty."
TMZ was the first to report that Ferrer died by suicide.
