- The Guardian Monday 2 May 2022
4 Opinion
How long Covid
has stopped me
in my tracks
long Covid feels like the wall at mile 18 in a marathon,
when suddenly your energy has gone, and you feel
like a diff erent person and you don’t know why.
It’s appropriate to use a running analogy, because
it seems that runners, triathletes, cyclists and other
formerly fi t people populate the long Covid forums in
far greater numbers than you’d expect – if, like me, you
assumed fi tness and health were the perfect shield.
My long Covid is suspected by my GP, since I never
actually tested positive, but many on the forums had
only mild infections and are still suff ering. Some are
now in wheelchairs, or confi ned to bed, or disabled, or
dysfunctional, and they post on social media groups
that can be wonderfully precise: Long Covid for
Endurance Athletes is one I found extremely helpful.
I suppose I am lucky that I have long Covid now ,
when science believes in it, and there are long Covid
clinics. The NHS Covid recovery site must be helpful
for many, and it discusses post-exertional malaise ,
which is the delayed-onset crash after exercise and
one of the most frustrating mysteries about post viral
conditions. You exercise and feel fi ne, and two days
later you don’t. But the NHS site and most others seem
meant for people who can’t walk upstairs, not those
who wonder whether they will be able to run in heart
zone 3 (up to 80% of maximum) again, or ever do more
than three miles without fearing the consequences;
the ones who are not disabled but not themselves.
I turned, of course, to Google. I learned that
people with chronic fatigue syndrome or myalgic
encephalomyelitis have been fl oored by post-
exertional malaise for decades and are only now being
believed. I learned that perhaps Covid is lurking in my
gut, or making my mast cells fi re when they shouldn’t,
and that I should be careful with my heart because
doing too much can give me myocarditis. But my heart
is fi ne, along with my X-rayed lungs and my blood,
Rose George
is the author of
Deep Sea and
Foreign Going:
Inside Shipping,
the Invisible
Industry That
Brings You 90%
of Everythingonce a drop in my infection-fi ghting white blood
cells had recovered. Whatever Covid is doing to me,
it is doing it quietly and sneakily.
It is stealth that characterises long Covid’s baffl ing
array of symptoms and its suff erers’ equally baffl ing
tendency to get better, then relapse, sometimes for no
reason. A Lancet study found that long Covid suff erers
reported on average more than 50 symptoms during
their illness, across an average of 9.1 organ systems.
Yet Covid, according to our government , is no longer
a concern. Never mind that everyone I talk to about
long Covid knows someone who has it, that more
than a million Britons are currently suff ering from it ,
and almost two-thirds of those say it has signifi cantly
limited their daily activities. One in 16 now have
Covid, according to Imperial College London’s April
R eact study , 40% more than at Omicron’s “peak” in
January, and the highest number ever.
Sometimes I feel as though I am gaslighting myself.
I can walk around so I can’t be ill. I can work, so I can’t
be ill. Sometimes I can run, so I can’t be ill. But then
I remember: once I didn’t always have a headache.
I used to be able to laugh without coughing. I am so
much better off than most, of course, the ones who
have brain fog, who cannot work or walk. But still I
mourn the thoughtlessness of good health, the time
when, to borrow a phrase from writer Sinéad Gleeson ,
my body was an afterthought. I trusted it.
Now I can’t rely on my body because I don’t know
what’s happening to it, and neither does anyone
else. “I’m so sorry,” said my lovely GP, phoning me
from her home because she had Covid. “We’re in the
dark.” As are employment lawyers, still struggling to
understand whether workers who are absent with
long Covid have a disability or an occupational health
condition. What is certain is that long Covid is costing
us hugely, and not just in money.Rose
George
O
ne of the mysteries of Covid is
how it hits the fi t. Before January,
I was one of those people. I ran 30
miles a week. I could turn up to
a 20-mile fell race on inadequate
training and run it, without a
second thought. I did yoga, weight
training and cycling. I had a low
resting heart-rate and strong biceps. For a 52-year-old
menopausal woman, I was in extremely good shape.
But then, on 3 January, I fell ill with a sore throat,
then fl u-like weakness, a cough that hasn’t left me
since, and a constant and persistent headache that
is resistant to every painkiller. In the months since,
I have been not ill, but not well either. I have days of
feeling fi ne, and then I don’t. As a runner, I can say