Maria

Age at interview: 41

Brief Outline:

Maria developed Covid symptoms in late December and got a positive Covid test on her daughter’s third birthday party. Maria’s Long Covid symptoms have lasted longer than she thought, and she felt that her husband had to do a lot of work while she was ill. Maria was interviewed in November 2021.

Maria is a 41-year-old woman living with her husband, 7-year-old son, and 3-year-old daughter, and works in local economic regeneration. Ethnicity: White British.

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Maria developed Covid symptoms on the 21^st of December 2021 but thought it was an asthma flare up until two days later when she developed a fever overnight. Maria then went to get tested for Covid but it was her daughter’s third birthday so she “ploughed on through it”. She became even more unwell on the 26^th and she noticed that her sense of smell had gone, as well as feeling like she had no energy.

Maria was completely bed-bound until New Year’s Eve and has no memory leading up to it. The NHS 111 service became worried about Maria and sent paramedics around on the 31^st, but they decided that she was safer and better off staying at home instead of going to hospital.

On the 2^nd of January, Maria’s fever finally broke and she tried to go outside for the first time. She just about managed to “shuffle” to the lamppost outside her house. Maria had been self-isolating at home so far, but had decided not to isolate herself from her children because she had already been coughing around them when she tested positive, as well as wanting to celebrate her daughter’s birthday and Christmas.

Maria’s son wanted to look after her so he would bring her satsumas and toast when that’s all she was able to eat. Maria’s husband worked harder to entertain and look after their kids, and Maria felt that “he was pretty much a single parent” for five or six months. Maria and her family found it hard to strike a balance between giving her time to rest and spending enough time together. Even though Maria’s parents lived very close, her and her husband kept both of their parents away during the pandemic because their “priority was protecting them”. Friends and neighbours brought food over when they heard Maria had Covid.

Maria didn’t think that her Covid symptoms would last very long and had planned to go back to work early in January, but she wasn’t able to return until nine months later. She felt that her employer had been very supportive and she’s now back in the office a few days a week. Maria also feels that she has been supported by her GP and other healthcare providers, but felt that some of them misunderstood her symptoms and assumed they were respiratory.

After experiencing a “silent panic attack” during a wedding, Maria realised that Long Covid has impacted her emotionally and she has sought out therapy. She recommends going to therapy for other people dealing with Long Covid and wishes she’d gone earlier. Maria had also joined a self-referral rehabilitation course for people with Long Covid and started to see a noticeable improvement, as well as finding hope when she saw other people making progress in their recovery.

Although most family members believed her, Maria said some of them did not realise the full extent of her illness until they saw her face to face.

I don’t, I don’t think he did no, I think my husband is a very practical solution kind of person, he’s not a big words and emotions person and he knows he would often say to me just look at what you couldn’t do and that’s what he would be saying to me just, just look at what you can do now that you couldn’t do before, just look how far you’ve come and I think he’s been I think he forgets sometimes now that I am a little bit better and I am able to do more things they still exhaust me and he’ll often say to me what’s with you then [laughs]? I think you’ve forgot darling, what’s happened [laughs]?

So yeah he’s, I don’t think my husband ever doubted me I have some family members I think who possibly doubted or dismissed, I have some unbelievers in the family, my parents were clearly very concerned about me, I remember going to have my vaccination and my eldest brother, I’ve five brothers and my eldest brother was volunteering at the vaccination centre who went through and said to me, it’s a poor deal when you’ve got to do a full day’s work for free just to see your sister [laughs]. But he said to me after the event then it was several months afterwards he said you, you were a mess when you came in that day, you couldn’t walk, you couldn’t, you know, there were things…I was quite shocked with his response to that, so. I guess for a lot of people they were, they were far removed from it, so they didn’t understand the extent of it perhaps. And it was only when they saw me, saw my physical appearance because I was not great with mobility because you could really see the tremors in me that they thought oh hang on.

It has taken a long time for Maria to be able to do simple things like picking up her daughter from nursery.

It took me probably until September before I drove to pick my daughter up from nursery just because of the effort to it takes to get her in the car seat, buckle her in and all of that faff that goes with it. I remember the first time I did it I did in an emergency as my husband couldn’t get there in time, he had a meeting or something I went and got her and I was so out of breath just putting her in the car and buckling her in, I had to sit in the car for five minutes before I set home, and it’s only a mile down the road. And I went to pick my son up from after school club and had to go through the whole rigmarole all over again and it was horrendous, it was awful and, and it’s only this week that I’ve started doing it regularly, so it’s taken me 11 months to get to the playground to be able to pick my children up.

Maria said the family dynamic had shifted since getting Long Covid. Her husband essentially took over parenting their children.

So, my husband was doing all the drop offs at school… but I mean there was those six or eight weeks when he was teaching from home, he was doing everything, so he’d go and do the drop offs, he’d made a sort of study upstairs and he’d be logging onto Google classroom within ten minutes of walking in the door and I’d be lying in bed hearing him teach classes all morning. And then come the end of the day he was the one that was suddenly getting off like teaching all day… getting off to pick both children up from school and nursery, he was making all the meals, he was putting the children to bed every night, he was pretty much single parenting and that I would say that was the case for a good five to six months of the year.

We couldn’t go out as a family, we couldn’t you know, there were no days out or anything like that. His weekends then would be spent giving me as much as possible, taking the children to the park, once we could he would take the children to his mum and dads all day and after a while I kind of said to him look this isn’t actually what I need, I need to be trying to be as normal as possible and spend a bit of time with the children and just try and find a bit more balance between giving me the space and the rests I need, and actually spending time with them… And so yeah, we tried to retip the balance a little bit, because my daughter every single day and she still does it now some weeks… “Are you better yet Mummy?” And, and that’s just, that’s just heart-breaking coming from a three year old and yeah still now she’s “Are you better yet Mummy?” You know, Mummy is getting better, I’m not all the way better now but I am definitely getting better. But, but back then it was just heart-breaking because no I’m not getting better, and I couldn’t see an end to it either [laughs].

So yeah, life back home was very much a case of my husband did the parenting, the two children knowing that mummy doesn’t do things I couldn’t even read a bedtime story. And as a kind of a contrary to that now my daughter will not let my husband put her to bed now, I think she just kind of grabbed onto the fact that I can do it now and she just won’t let him do it at all, she’s gone completely the other way which my husband and I were, were and still are sleeping in separate beds to allow me to get a good quality sleep as he’s a big snorer and my daughter sneaks into bed with him every night [laughs].

So, I think there’s a real, that family dynamics shift in terms of, I mean I’ve done two early mornings all year I think my husband’s got up early with the kids every single morning, he’s not had a lie in at all except for maybe two days... The last time I remember getting up with the children was actually Boxing Day and I remember sitting at the kitchen table doing Christmas crackers with them that they, you know, that they got over Christmas and feeling absolutely dreadful but thinking no I need to, I need to give him some bit of a break here and I think that was the last true lie in he’s had at all [laughs].