At last! Proof Long Covid is not a figment of my imagination
And, it should be pointed out, this report is not saying Long Covid is all in the imagination - far from it, which should be reassuring to those of us who fall into the unhappy category of the carry-over Covid casualty.
If you have Long Covid, you’ve no doubt been informed at one time or another, by helpful, well-meaning individuals, that there is actually no such thing. It’s all in your head.
I went into a restaurant a few days ago. It was very crowded downstairs. I asked if there was any table in a place that was less crowded, for example upstairs? The waitress looked at me like I had two heads.
I explained humbly that I had had Long Covid and that I was still phobic about very crowded places. She looked at me like I had three heads and said flatly that they weren’t opening the upstairs. We left.
This Irish study involved 988 participants and was conducted by APC Microbiome Ireland, which is a world-leading SFI research centre based at UCC. APC Microbiome Ireland conducted the study in conjunction with Cork University Hospital (CUH) and Long Covid Advocacy.
To my mind, this is super analysis of the after-effects of Covid, because it was carried out on people here in Ireland. Not in Scotland or the States, or Germany, or the UK.
Long Covid, as we know, is a term for the period lasting months, and even years that victims continue to suffer the after-effects of the original flu; it’s like a helping of post -viral fatigue to the power of 100. And it appears to be incredibly random - we all know close contacts who suffered a head-cold for a few days whilst giving other people Covid. The recipients, in some cases, were ill for months. Or years.
Memory loss or cognitive dysfunction or brain fog was reported by half of those taking part in the study. Many more complained of muscle or joint pain.
The study found that four out of 10 respondents reported that the long-term health effects of contracting the virus had had a serious impact on their ability to work. A further six out of 10 respondents said they had had to take sick leave from work.
Check, check, check, check. All in their heads, is it?
Last October, I contracted Covid. It started with a temperature, a headache and a sore throat; then I blacked out in the loo and collapsed, spectacularly slashing my forehead open to the bone on the sharp edge of a piece of furniture and ending up in hospital where, it emerged, I needed six stitches.
Suddenly, I was very unwell. I was hardly able to string a sentence together. I had bad headaches. I was continually exhausted. Sitting up in bed made me tired. Standing made me even more tired. Walking left me whacked. Having a conversation with someone left me shaky with fatigue. It was months before I could stagger out of the back door and make it as far as my own gate.
And so on and so forth.
“Get out of bed,” my husband prodded. “You need to move.”
I couldn’t hack the exhaustion. It left me drowning in helpless tears. The memory loss was horrendous. I’d start a sentence and the other half melted away. I’d put things down and have no recollection where I put them, or why I even needed them in the first place. Conversation left me shattered. I went back to work after six months - six months!
Work was exhausting. By mid-afternoon my entire body felt like it was filling up with the kind of poisoned fumes that are blown out through the exhaust pipe of an old truck, leaving me sick and shaky, my teeth chattering.
Once the day was over, my sole mission was to get to bed and sleep. I was in bed every evening before dinner and did not get up until the next morning.
This was not in my head. It was not imaginary. It was not down to being lazy. I absolutely hated every minute of it.
In May, I came out in a rash that gradually covered me head to toe. It was itchy and uncomfortable and hot and lasted for 10 days, during which I lay swathed in Aloe Vera gel, utterly miserable.
Things got better after that, but I still can’t drive the car to anywhere that’s more than half an hour away or I get exhausted and shaky.
All my life I read incessantly - books, newspapers, magazines - but now my avid bookworm brain has gone into hibernation. It doesn’t want to read.
I had a couple of days off recently, and I invited two people to lunch. Just two people. Mindful that I needed to pace myself, I did a lot of the preparation the night before. The next morning, I started the remaining preparations in good time.
Everything went smoothly. I rested before my guests arrived. God, I was behaving like a 92- year-old, I chided myself.
The afternoon was a great success. Two hours after my guests left my teeth started chattering. I was in bed for the next two days.
Believe me, I believe in Long Covid.
I was interested to see that Independent TD Denis Naughton has pointed out that some 21,000 people are unable to work because of Long Covid symptoms. This figure, he pointed out, did not take into account the tens of thousands suffering with less severe forms of Long Covid, who were going to work but who were not contributing to the same extent that they did prior to the illness.
He called on the government to provide more supports for people with Long Covid. Well, cold day in hell and all of that.
Despite claims by some, that, like the holocaust, Long Covid is all in our heads, the World Health Organisation has classed it as a chronic illness which affects people for at least three months after their initial infection. The Cork study concluded it had a negative impact on many people’s ability to carry out daily tasks and worsened their overall quality of life. Well, check.
But let’s be honest. Nobody wants to hear about Long Covid. What most people want is to just forget it ever happened.
Anybody else out there feel like a relic of the long-forgotten era of the Covid Pandemic?
Hello? Anybody else like that out there?
Anybody at all?
App?
