Let’s call Long-Covid what it is then shall we? It’s a chronic illness. A new one. A shocking thing to think about for the many of the people that have it. We are beginning to discover that a scary number of people have it and have had their lives changed by it. We must hope not forever but seemingly no one really knows. It’s a disaster, an appalling disaster and just like the more than one hundred thousand dead Britons and three million lost worldwide largely something that could have been prevented by an actually functioning society.
I have it. I’ve been sick for 6 months and counting. I turned 29 on the 2nd of October and was sick and off work by around the 10th. I have never really gotten better. On my birthday I got up at the crack of dawn to go cycling. I was a very fit indeed cyclist. It’s a point worth stressing for those that somehow still do not realise how dangerous COVID is but, in order to be fitter than I was at the time, you’d need to be obsessed. Yes, certainly, there were plenty of fitter and faster people than me, for those people though, words like “a hobby” don’t quite cut it. I was cycling between 350 and 450 kilometers a week. I loved it so much, it gave my life so much meaning and adventure, it was my meditation, what I did to socialise, what I’m doing for my career. I so dearly hope that’s not gone forever. I’d found my thing, I wasn’t particularly looking for another.
Because now I am nowhere. Half the days a week I’m not making it to the shops. I’ve had some better days. Days when the sun hits my face and I feel the pleasure of a good mood and can walk around my area feeling good, but I can feel all the while swelling in the back of my neck, a dull nausea, dizziness if I move a bit too fast and a faint headache. I can tell my body is sick and that these feelings will ramp up and up sometime soon. Imagine getting a cold or the flu and just waking up every morning not feeling better. A week passed, then another, then months and I just did not get better. Till eventually, I had to give up hope that I would actually get better and had to come to terms with a life seemingly irrevocably changed. The things I love to do gone and the prospect of having to change my perception of what I am capable of and what my life might look like in order not to totally despair.
Of course, I still hope I get better. I would be devastated to fully accept that cycling as a big part of my life is over. This illness I have is too new and very little is known about it, so maybe there might be a cure. That sadly is part of the fear. I live in the U.K a country controlled these days mostly by corruption and ineptitude. Some of the good bits still function but they are on their knees due to the deliberate neglect of austerity. Who knows if this is the sort of country that will honestly try its best to solve something like this anymore. I hear a shocking number of NHS workers have Long Covid, which they contracted fighting for our lives. I sure hope a cure is coming.
I do believe I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ve got let’s say enough health to be mostly functional. My work has been tremendously supportive, I can go for a walk feel the pleasure of being outside at least a couple of times a week. My lungs are not turning themselves inside out, I have this headache but I don’t think I’m losing my memory in the way some describe, it’s more like a migraine than losing the ability to think. Comparative suffering is a stupid game, but, comparatively, I guess I’ve done okay amongst the Long Covid havers.
To spare my mental health I’ve begun planning for what I might do if I can’t live the life I was living. I am of course absolutely hopping mad that COVID was allowed to ravage this country like this. I got this bloody thing in October, right as cases were surging. Imagine how many would be alive or not crippled by this thing if our government gave a split damn. I took up cycling to avoid having to think too hard about the terrible things I’d learned about the world whilst studying politics. The world seems to now resolutely be the sort of place that forces you to look at it, whether you’d like to or not.
Zackonnabike 