In February 2020, I was a fit, active, healthy 40 something working as a freelance marketing manager, looking after my son and living a normal life. Then in March 2020, Covid struck and everything in my life changed.
After 10 years pushing through with post viral fatigue, I went to bed with a runny nose and just didn’t wake up. I slept for weeks and eventually woke up to realise I was bedridden, unable to move, except to crawl to the toilet.
Here is the story of the most bizarre thing that I have ever experienced ― 12 months of Long Covid.
Hi – It’s Kate here, from the UK. I have always been a trier. I tried hard at school, at Uni, at work, at losing weight, at baking the best cakes, at being a good friend, at going above and beyond… you get the picture! I was always wired, always on the go, never having time and always stressed about it! When all this trying eventually caught up with me, I was working three jobs and volunteering on four teams at my church.
Life was great! I was super active: working out three times a week, fishing and hiking with my husband and dogs, camping and traveling on the weekends. My stained-glass business was going strong and my newest passion for teaching meditation was flourishing: I had just taught a meditation class for Microsoft.
Then, WHAM!
As I’m sitting here, writing this letter, I feel incredibly grateful. I hope my story can serve as an inspiration to others.
From August 2017 until December 2018, I was bedridden and completely dependent on care. I was unable to stand upright or eat by myself. How did I get there?
It is like a zipper that you draw up slowly, tooth by tooth, until it is whole once more. This is a process one must learn and practice as one goes forward. You must create new experiences through success. This has nothing to do with ‘thinking yourself well again’, but rather understanding yourself well.
I am writing this to those of you who are ill and have lost hope that you will get well again. I write because I want the health services to be more knowledgeable in the way they meet us. It was tough having to go through this on my own, and I would have wished there had been a team of psychologists, physiotherapists, and doctors who would not focus on my symptoms but on my rehabilitation, but first and foremost that could have provided a fair explanation of what might have happened. This is an essential key for people to get the courage to rehabilitate.
Hi, my name is Mette and I am the mother of a wonderful girl who now is 22 years old.
My daughter fell ill when she was 13.
The fear of symptoms makes them much worse, stronger, they last longer and steal all the focus. At least that was how it was for me. I got more tired because the fear stole all my focus, and I felt anxious all the time while I was waiting to feel better. The fear aggravated my symptoms.
It may seem like a miracle, as I went from being barely able to walk to the end of my street to running my usual 5k running route and 10 mile cycling route in the space of a week. I’m not as fit as I used to be, but confident I will now get back to where I was. (Just to put this into context) I was about to do the Edinburgh marathon when Covid hit, and had just finished a 60 mile bike ride when I caught Covid).
I got sick in March 2020. I was exhausted and couldn’t do anything but lie down. I went to see the doctor because it didn’t feel like normal fatigue. Blood was drawn, but the tests came back normal.
I was ill for a whole chapter of my life, which I simply cannot bear to describe. But today I am well.
Gradually my body ground to a halt, and I could feel the strength just seeping out of me. I was twenty and studying higher education. I was also an active athlete and wanted to focus fully on my sport. After … Continued
What do we do when we go through a living nightmare? When the people we love the most; our own children, fall seriously ill? If anybody had looked into the future and told me what my child would be going through, I would have said “I will never be able to deal with that”.
My name is Lotte, and I am 35 years old. I climb high mountains, I swim in the sea no matter the weather, I play with my son, I work, I hang out with friends, I sing, go to the movies and to concerts, to late-night dinners, and I love cooking and having guests over. I LIVE!
It had been a horrible night suffering through the worst migraine of my life. My migraines had been out of control, but like many medical professionals, I minimized my symptoms and pushed on through so that I could take care of other people.
In the spring of 2017, our daughter came down with a fever, sore ears and was so weak she was unable to attend school.
My despair was overwhelming. The doctors gave me no hope of being able to recover from ME. On the contrary I remember a specialist saying: “You must lie down and rest, maybe for the rest of your life.”
Anxiety. Fear of the future. Sorrow. Insecurity. About three years ago, I did not know much about what these words could mean. We went to Greece on autumn vacation as a regular family of five in September 2017. A week later we were no longer a regular family, we just did not know it ourselves yet.
This is my story as a mother of a sick child. She had Borrelia and meningitis. Then ME, but she recovered.
My life today involves very little pain and I have lots of energy. I am very energetic and can do more than just work. Energy to look after the people around me. I love my life and do what I want to.
Me a couple of months ago: I am signing my resignation from work because of a long-lasting sickness. I appreciate the economic support I get from the Norwegian welfare system, but time is running out.
The basic summary of the cause of my illness is a familiar one. As far as I believe, the cause was burnout, plus the trigger of a nasty flu bug at the same time. From this I never properly recovered, and things quickly spiralled out of control. However, looking back at my life with hindsight, it is easy to see that there was already a foundation of issues which were affecting my health, and paving the way for a future illness.
I wish someone would have given me the knowledge that I have today, that someone would have normalised my condition 13 years ago and said: “You’ll be fine. We have a support network that will help you get back on your feet.” Instead, I was left alone, left to stumble through an overwhelming amount of advice on what to do when you’re a CFS/ME sufferer. It cost me 13 years of my life and my children missed out on their teenage years. At this conference organised by Catosenteret rehabilitation centre, Anette tells her story. It’s a story that touched many people.
I just got home from work. Our daughter is in school, at an activity day (!), and the house is quiet. Now is a good time for me to tell our story. It is three years to the day since … Continued
Since I got well again I have completed my medical studies within the normal timeframe and then worked as a doctor, full time, including night shifts of 19 hours, with no more fatigue than any of my colleagues, before making the decisive choice that life is too short to carry on with the hectic lifestyle that I was used to.
If your own brain, that part of the brain which you can’t access, is convinced that a bit of movement is very dangerous, what chance do you have without the right tools?
It is January 2015. The youngest boy in the family is 12 years old. Following a slightly unsettled period after the children and I moved from Oslo to Mo i Rana, our son has settled down and made new friends that he likes.
My name is Michael and I am now 47 years old. A few years ago I was severely ill primarily due to back pains.
I have always been a girl who enjoyed being active. I went to the US for a year after high school and worked as an au pair. When I came back home in the summer of 2016 it only took me a couple of weeks before I started working again. For almost three months I even had two jobs.
The story starts at the end of 2014 when I came back to Russia after several years of living, studying, and working abroad. The first year of being back to Russia was kind of hard emotionally and it is hard to say why exactly.
I was 23 in 2013. I was travelling at least once a month; I was a student with three part-time jobs and had taken on various other duties. I was also working out and was very active.
It is almost six years since I first detected that something was wrong with my body. My life was stable and generally happy back then; I had a partner, my studies, and a network of good people. For years, I had enjoyed working out and exercising, as it gave me a boost of energy and put me in a good mood, but now suddenly I seemed to get some sort of ‘hangover’ when I’d been exercising; feeling exhausted, getting a slight ‘brain fog’ and generally feeling irritable for up to a week after a training session.
The Lightning Process (LP) is a disputed topic, and most of what you read about it, is negative. I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome (ME) myself. If I had believed all the negative things I read on the net, I would not have recovered.
When I was 16 years old, I lived a very normal life. I went to school, enjoyed working out and spent a lot of time with friends. After my 17th birthday, though, my life was anything but normal.
I fell ill after having had mononucleosis at upper secondary school – without knowing it. I noticed symptoms, but did not understand what was happening to me as I celebrated the end of school. This was in 2014.
I developed ME after a bout of mononucleosis in the spring of 2003. This happened at a time where all events in my life were pointing upwards.
One day in February 2010 I felt ill, properly knocked out. I thought it was the flu and I might be off work for a few days. I got better and returned to work. But a few days later I was ill again, and this time I didn’t recover.
When I was seventeen, I contracted mononucleosis and was really ill for months. As soon as I recovered, I went back to school full time. Being a trainee hairdresser, I would spend a lot of time on my feet, with my hands held high. It did not take long before I developed tendinitis in both arms, and my general health deteriorated, from hardly ever being unwell prior to the mononucleosis (common cold, gastroenteritis, tonsillitis), to being ill often.