Boris Johnson thinks long Covid is ‘b******s’? He should try dragging himself a mile in my shoes
I was a ‘do-er’, but Covid took my identity from me completely, writes Louise Dunne. I spent days in bed, was asleep by 8pm and my social life ground to a halt. Three years after catching the virus, I still have recurring symptoms. Here’s what it’s really like to suffer long Covid, Boris...
So, Boris Johnson thinks that long Covid is b******s, does he? A lot of people do – I’ve experienced that stigma, first-hand. But dismissive attitudes – the former prime minister’s, or people in my everyday life – don’t make any difference to the fact that three years after contracting Coronavirus in the first wave of the pandemic, I am still suffering. Walk a mile in my (slow, painful, aching) shoes before you say long Covid isn’t real.
I picked up the virus in October 2020, at the end of the first lockdown and the first wave of infections. It was at a time when the NHS had only just started to roll out testing and when hospital numbers were incredibly high. For the first week or so, it felt like a normal cold – it was also the time when we were told that if you were sneezing (I was) and didn’t have a temperature (I didn’t) that it was highly unlikely to be Covid and “just” a cold.
For the next few days, my sense of taste and smell started to deteriorate – and at around 10 days when I thought I was starting to improve, I was suddenly hit by a huge wave of tiredness and developed a fever. I don’t remember very much of the next few days at all, except for feeling scared. My symptoms would change by the hour, my heart rate was more than 140 beats per minute – even when sitting down – and I barely had enough energy to walk from the sofa to the kitchen. I live by myself, and no one was allowed to visit.