My life with Long Covid: Grey, sucking fatigue continues...

DEAR God, the woman said, it’s back.

“Well, it never really left,” I answered.

But I knew where she was coming from.

No, no, no, absolutely not. The Covid organ grinder can’t be starting up again? But it is.

As hundreds of thousands of children, teenagers and young adults prepare to return to school and college, the World Health Organisation classified the latest Covid strain, called Eris, as a variant of interest, which means that Eris is being monitored for mutations that could make it more severe.

The Health Protection Surveillance Centre says Eris is (of course) more transmissible than previously circulating variants, although as yet they don’t think this strain makes you more ill.

Next step? Categorising it as a variant of concern and telling us that, erm, yes, it may make you quite ill indeed.

Eris currently comes with any of the following – a sore throat, a runny or blocked nose, sneezing, a cough with or without phlegm, a headache, muscle pains, or an altered sense of smell.

Hospital cases are up, there’s a lot of talk about visitor restrictions, and the Taoiseach has stated that, while we’re facing a new wave of Covid, he doesn’t think restrictions will be implemented this winter.

Distant, but persistent drum beats are pounding in the darker recesses of our brains. Promises that the government is not being complacent about it and that a high amount of natural immunity has built up in the community - both because people have had Covid and survived it and because of widespread vaccination - do not entirely reassure.

This October, it will be two years since someone came into my house and sneezed Covid into my face, at which point I became extremely ill, despite the fact that I was fully vaccinated.

Next came Long Covid, as a result of which I continue to experience intermittent bouts of fatigue.

Despite all the triumphant hype and chest-thumping about how Ireland dealt with the pandemic, and how much money the country pumped into dealing with it, I’m still waiting to be seen at a Long Covid Clinic.

I’m still taking an array of Chinese herbs and tonics every morning. I still have to be careful about my energy levels because if I unwittingly overdo things - and here the phrase ‘over-do’ means nothing remotely like it did before I got Covid – such as exercising, household chores, work, or stress levels, there are consequences.

A grey, sucking fatigue comes on at any point up to about 72 hours after a trigger event. On occasion, this vampiric exhaustion gets so bad it leaves me nauseated. Any time I get close to building up to even a reasonable exercise regime – walking, gym, swimming - I get exhausted again and have to reduce it, pause it, or stop altogether.

I still can’t wear perfume because it makes me feel sick. When a spell comes on, I can’t drink coffee, tolerate loud noise, or use any but the mildest shower gel or body lotion. I still baulk at entering rooms containing more than a couple of people.

Why, I feel like screaming, don’t they just get on top of this thing?

They still can’t explain why, if I’m not really careful about pacing myself, I revert to Covid Zombie status, two years after contracting the virus.

I got it once. Just the once, for God’s sake. They can’t explain why other people who got Covid three or four times only suffered the symptoms of a bad flu. Or just a cold and a stuffy head.

Why, for example, was the virus able to hinder the normal function of mitochondria, the tiny energy-producing factories in my cells and not those of other people?

Why do experts still orate about Post Exertional Malaise or Post Exertional Symptom Exacerbation or even Post Exertional Neuroimmune Exhaustion (which is basically a worsening of symptoms, including brain fatigue, anything from 12 to 72 hours after even minor physical or mental exertion) and yet are not producing an antidote apart from (infuriatingly) advising us to ‘pace yourself’, ‘stay within your energy envelope’ and ‘Understand That It’s Not You, It’s Covid’.

Ironically, even if they eventually claim to have found a cure, what Covid did to me has left me very wary of allowing myself to be injected with anything that might later turn out to be some kind of trigger.

There are still people who will tell you that there’s actually no such thing as Long Covid, or who will sigh meaningfully if you try to explain that you still get tired easily, don’t go out much, and avoid flying and indoor social functions. They will pontificate that you’re simply avoiding life, as someone, who recently came home from a foreign holiday and promptly tested positive for Covid declared to me. Ah, I was too tired to take him up on it.