Tony

Brief Outline:

Gender: Male
Ethnicity: Black Caribbean
Background: Tony has two children, and is a teacher and musician. 
One of the biggest impacts of the pandemic on Tony was that he couldn’t perform as a musician. When he caught Covid he was completely wiped out and felt drained of all energy.

 

 

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Tony remembers news footage at the beginning of the pandemic of empty streets in Wuhan with armed forces patrolling to make sure people stayed at home. He recalls thinking it was like a Hollywood film. At the time he wasn’t worried because he thought ‘it’s over there and it’s not here’. When lockdown started in the UK he said that ‘you kind of lost track and sense of what day it was’. He couldn’t continue his work as a teacher because schools were closed, and the thing that ‘hurt most’ was not being able to perform as a musician and do gigs. He used the time to focus on writing and creating music at home instead. 

When he caught Covid he said ‘it absolutely wrecked me. I was just broke, broken, just no strength’. His first symptom was a dry cough. At first, he thought this was from his asthma, but took a test when his inhaler didn’t help. His daughters also tested positive a couple of days later.  It took him about 14 days to start to feel better, and he lost his sense of taste and smell. 

Tony lost a friend to Covid, and this changed his perspective. He said ‘the fact that people were dying from it means you take it seriously’. He decided to take the vaccine after hearing about friends’ vaccine experiences, and thought vaccination was part of the strategy for living with Covid. 

Tony found it persuasive when some ‘anti-vaxxer’ friends changed their minds about the safety of the vaccine.

A couple of reasons; I’ve got a couple of friends who I call “intelligent”, and they were like anti-vaxxers to begin with and they kind of changed their tune through all that and says, “I’ve had it.” So, I have to say that influenced me because, you know, as I said, I don’t know, I don’t have the answers. Who does? I don’t have the answers so you’re listening to people but you, you’re listening to people who are educated, who can explain the pros and cons and, you know, I’ve still got friends of mine now who are refusing to have the vaccine and, you know, saying ‘Oh it’s, it’s conspiracy theory this-, you know, some people are really strongly against it, and I’ve had a couple of people who are anti-vaxxers who’ve got Covid and they’ve been really, really sick from it as well.

Tony Z realised something was different when his cough wouldn’t go away even after using an inhaler.

I was the one who started coughing really badly one Sunday, Sunday the I think 13th of December 2020, just had a real dry cough and I thought, “Oh maybe my asthmas kicked back in” because I did have slight asthma years back but not really used my pump. So, I thought, “Oh maybe, maybe it’s just your asthma kicking in, change of season, you know, it’s gone damp,” so, you know, I used my pump, but that dry cough was, wasn’t going anywhere fast.

When Tony Z mentioned he had Covid on Facebook to encourage others to take the pandemic seriously lots of people reached out to offer help.

I might have mentioned it on Facebook, yeah, I did, I did because I thought there’s a lot of people who are not taking this seriously so I’m saying, “Look, you know, for all those who don’t believe Covid’s real, I can testify it’s very real.” And then a lot of people sent me message and a lot of people said, “If you need anything-” so as a community, you know, I think that’s probably what’s helped us get through it, you know, because we, we were in trouble, people looked out and helped others, you know.

Tony Z caught Covid in December 2020. He couldn’t get out of bed and felt that Covid ‘drained every life out of me’.

All three of us are literally in our rooms all day, couldn’t even get out the bed, I was just drained, it was the weakest I’ve ever felt. That, that was the one thing I can say it drained every life out of me, I just felt completely weakened.

Tony Z caught Covid in December 2020. He described having ‘hot and cold sweats’.

Yeah, I had the hot and cold sweats. I mean I’d be sitting on the bed, and I’d be absolutely roasting, take my clothes off and then five minutes later be freezing so had to bring it all back on so it was, temperature was up and down.

Tony Z who worked as a schoolteacher and a musician had both his jobs paused for a while.

It affected work for me because obviously schools were closed and I’m a teacher so I couldn’t, what hurt most was I couldn’t play and perform as a musician, doing gigs, that hurt me, because that’s my social life. That was the thing I live for the weekends, travelling round the country playing and performing so not being able to be in school teaching that was bad enough then not being able to play or perform that was even worse, so yeah.

Tony Z was worried about a tight chest but was reassured after paramedics checked him.

The only time I really had any concerns because during the time when I had Covid, I got to one day where I don’t know if it was anxiety or what, but my chest got really, really tight and it started beating a lot faster than it should and I was getting very concerned. So concerned, I called the emergency services. They came and they did, you know, blood pressure, diabetes, sugar levels. I got tested for absolutely everything’s and said, “You’re fine.” Probably I was, just probably got anxious with not feeling well and stuff like that and so but that was the only one time I feel, ‘oh this is going, not so much I’m not in control with what I’m feeling,’ but, you know, the, I just thought my health wasn’t, I wasn’t in control of my health. It started to grow out of my control in terms of how it, how I felt and how it affected it me so that was the one time.