Leanne’s story – living with Long Covid

"This is Long Covid. No one knows if or when I will get better."

“Just over one year ago I started to feel poorly and discovered my temperature had shot up. We sent the kids away, my husband and I moved into different rooms and tried not to panic. On the advice of NHS24 I was assessed at the COVID-19 Assessment Hub. The conclusion was my chest didn’t sound great, but it wasn’t bad enough to go to hospital, phew! I still remember waking up struggling to breathe and worrying I might not wake up in the morning. Anyway, I expected it to pass.

One year on, and not yet recovered, I have had a mountain of tests with no answers. I am now waiting for them to check my heart. I have respiratory physios coming to my house, an OT, a respiratory consultant, an amazing GP and a mountain of pills and gadgets to help me through the day. Fatigue, headaches, brain fog, sore joints and muscles, high heart rate, breathlessness, new allergies and stomach problems are only a handful of the weird symptoms which come & go. And I have had a temperature every single day for a whole year!

This is Long Covid. No one knows if or when I will get better. I battle to work from home, do the shopping and all the other things we do in normal life. I might even, when we’re allowed again and I feel up to it, meet friends or go for lunch. It’s good for mental health and if I end up back under the blanket on the sofa then hopefully it will have been worth it.

I don’t speak about this normally because of a strange feeling of embarrassment that I couldn’t just shake this off, but also, I wasn’t in hospital on a ventilator. However, this is not binary. There are thousands of us stuck here somewhere in between. I have now joined a Long Covid PPI group, have trialled a Long Covid app for a University research project and I have trialled a book about brain fog. Anything to help the thousands of others following me down this path.”

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