Annabelle

Age at interview: 39

Brief Outline:

Annabelle works in the charity sector, managing a team of people. She lives with her husband and three children, aged 3, 14, and 15. Annabelle describes her ethnicity as white. 

Prior to having Long Covid, Annabelle described herself as very energetic, with an active family and professional life. She has felt very unwell since contracting Covid in March 2020. She feels as if she has aged 10 years since getting Covid. She has pain in her joints and much lower energy than before. Annabelle was interviewed in August and October 2021. 

More about me...

Before she had Covid, Annabelle was healthy and full of energy and had a very busy professional and family life. In March 2020, she became ill with Covid. She had a high temperature and a severe and hacking cough which made her feel like she may not be able to breathe again. She felt extremely unwell, ‘awful,’ for the first two weeks, but needed to take four weeks off work which was very unusual for her. She had a phased return to work which helped because she was still so tired. Since her initial infection, she has had fatigue, pain in her joints and described herself as “generally feeling really unwell” and old for her age. She has also had significant hair loss which has had a huge psychological impact on her. Three months after the initial infection, Annabelle had to take two more weeks off work because she ‘literally couldn’t get out of bed in the morning’. She had blood tests which showed that she needed medication to control her thyroid function. She thinks the change in her thyroid levels may have been caused by the initial Covid infection. 

Annabelle had Covid for a second time in January 2021. She experienced many of the same symptoms as she did the first time, although perhaps less severe. This time she also lost her sense of taste and smell which has not yet returned to normal. She still has extreme tiredness in the mornings and struggles to manage her body temperature. She still feels ‘different’ in herself. She still has pain in her ankles and feet. She feels that she is experiencing some improvement with symptoms in the afternoons.

Annabelle is taking a wide range of supplements and B12 injections to try to help her symptoms, particularly her persistent fatigue, her hair loss, and her energy levels. Although her thyroid levels have improved, she still feels no less exhausted. She is considering seeing an endocrinologist privately because she doesn’t feel that her GP acknowledges that her ongoing symptoms could be Long Covid or related to her initial infection. She feels uncomfortable going back and forth to the GP. She finds it difficult to know where to go next because there is still so much uncertainty about Long Covid and about whether her symptoms could mean something else is wrong. More recently, she has stopped trying to read about Long Covid. She is focusing on what might help her to manage individual symptoms, like fatigue and hair loss.

Her main message to health professionals is that it is so important to feel listened to and not to feel dismissed.

Annabelle described feeling like she had to crawl out of bed in the morning and like she could go to bed at 8pm. This level of fatigue had been a consistent symptom for her.

Yeah, just for me it’s the tiredness that is…is chronic fatigued feeling that if I could stay in bed ’til twelve o’clock every day, I would.
 
How would you describe that sense of tiredness? What’s it like?
 
For me, I think [sighs] I think if I didn’t have children and I didn’t have the financial overheads, I wonder whether or not I would be getting out of bed until later on in the day. And I think because there just isn’t an option, it is…I will crawl out of bed and get out of bed to make sure I am up with my youngest.
 
And with work as well because if I don’t work then we don’t have a home and I really love my home and I don’t want to go down that route [laughs]. And I just wonder, am I…is it because I don’t have the choice or is it actually because I am able to physically get up and go on and I just really need to motivate myself to do that? I was weighing it up, thinking God if I had, I don’t know, another condition [sighs] or that was causing this, or could it get so bad that I couldn’t physically get up then, I wonder? But no, I do feel like I am improved in the day though.
 
Yeah, in the day. I do feel like sort of early afternoon, I just could go to bed every day at sort of eight o’clock, happily. In fact, I do, pretty much every day about eight, nine o’clock [laughs].
 
But the earlier the better.
 
So, you feel that initial fatigue very early on, some improvement in the middle of the day and then needing to go to bed earlier than usual?
 
Yeah, definitely earlier. And definitely, I think, in terms of life pattern I’d have gone to bed reasonably early – being realistic, I…my child wakes up at half five every day – so we go to bed early anyway. But we would go to bed and, you know, talk or…or watch something or read something or, you know, just be awake maybe for an hour or so. But, yeah, now it is we go to bed, we go to sleep because I’m so tired. And I don’t sleep well as well, I am up and down.
 
And that kind of tiredness and fatigue, has that been something that has been pretty consistent since you initially had Covid? Or does it come and go in waves? Is it sometimes better, sometimes worse?
 
No, it’s been consistent. I would say that’s been a consistent thing that I’ve had.
 

 

Annabelle had found her symptoms, including her loss of hair, “very depressing.”

I’m trying to think of the other symptoms that I had; joints, fatigue, smell, taste, thyroid function, my hair; my hair sounds really vain, me mean moaning about it, but actually, in term of imp-, impact psychologically I am always wearing exten-, like a clip-in extensions now because my hair has just dropped. I’ve always had thick long hair. My hair is now non-existent, it’s awful. And that’s probably one, the most, vain impact but actually psychologically, that’s been a huge thing for me. I found it very depressing. And I think with the general fatigue and lack of movement, I think the weight gain, I have gained weight, and also, with the thyroid, obviously, the weight gain comes hand-in-hand with that. But, yeah, they are my main symptoms.
 
You mentioned a couple of times about your hair, it’s just not what it was. Is that something you’ve been able to have a conversation with your GP or anyone else about?
 
Yeah, I’ve obviously raised my hair, saying that, you know, alongside the…how I feel that my hair’s an issue for me. And it is, I mean, there are…I’ve got like a clip-in extensions in. My hair, if I take it out, looks like I’ve been fried or electrocuted. And it’s about two…between two and four inches long maybe, from my head. It’s like terrible. It’s awful. But, yeah, nothing.
 
I went to a trichologist and she said there’s nothing wrong with my follicles and the follicles are fine. But it just…I have it trimmed, you know, it’s trimmed regularly to, you know, cut away any split ends so that was why they did my bloods. But there’s no [pause]…there doesn’t seem to be any real acknowledgement of…or interest, I think is what I feel like. It’s not that interesting.
 
And actually, why are you just moaning about your hair? And like, it’s hair. That’s how I feel, like they’re…but actually to me it’s really important.

 

Annabelle was planning to pay for a full set of thyroid blood tests and she was considering seeing a specialist in hormone-related conditions privately.

Yeah. I did talk to the GP about having my T three levels checked which is what not routinely checked with the NHS. And there’s lots of, you know research out there. So, I changed my levothyroxine, I told you I was going to make that conscious decision to try the natural, desiccated version. And he said he’d support it with some blood…that he’d continue to do the blood tests but it’s not a full thyroid panel. So, I’m going to look to see if I can get a private panel done. And then I suppose my next thought is whether or not I just see someone like an endocrinologist or someone privately. I…I think it would be an endocrinologist, possibly.

Annabelle felt less confident about socialising since she had lost her hair. She used to love going out but now “can think of nothing worse”.

But even when I…when I have someone come in the house and there’s like a photo of me on a canvas that we’ve got and like, I think the words were like, oh bloody hell, how long ago was that? And I was like, two years. And, oh, blimey. That was the general reaction. And I know that wasn’t meant insensitively, I’m sure he didn’t really think, probably but actually I was really aware. I thought, well it’s not a positive change I know that much [laughs]. And, you know, it does make me feel less confident, I can’t be bothered to make an effort.
 
Like, my partner said to me, oh we’ll go…if you want to go out, you know, next week I’ll have the kids and if you want to…because we’ve moved there’s a couple of ladies who live in the houses next door of a similar sort of age and we were like, will we just get together and go and have some…something to eat and drink or something. And part of that fills me with dread, because the thought of leaving my house any time after like seven, I can think of nothing worse, I just want to be snuggled up and doing nothing at seven o’clock. So, half of that fills me with dread – which is really unlike me because personality typing is extrovert – and you know, true to that form, I am quite extrovert and I love going out. And I love chatting and…and doing things. But I don’t want to do that, I can think of nothing worse.
 
The thought of having to go out and find something to wear when I feel not like myself, or I feel bad, and then having to sort out my hair. And the hair’s just the icing on the cake because it’s just different. And that feels really…it feel…it doesn’t…I don’t feel like it sits well with my values to feel so fickle. But at the same time, I never thought it would affect me like that.
 
Yeah. Thank you so much for…Thank you so much for sharing that.
 
Oh, that’s okay. I feel guilty because my mum, bless her, I remember when she had chemo, her hair…she was so brave. And I think my God, I haven’t had all of that and I feel just as like…I feel traumatised by not having the same hair I had and without a valid…without a valid excuse, if that makes sense? I feel like it’s less valid. And it is, you know, to me, less valid. I’m not going through something awful and yes, I’m tired every day but actually impacts, you know, psychologically, I think on your wellbeing, if you look different, It’s change, isn’t it? Hard to get used to.
 
Yeah, I can relate really to what you were saying and I think lots and lots of people would be able to strongly relate to what you were saying too about how important these things are to many of us in terms of our identity.
 
Yeah
 
What we see when we look in the mirror.
 
It’s about your feeling of self, isn’t it? 
 
Yeah.
 
And I think for me, it made me feel more feminine. Like, and it made me feel more youthful and I’ve never been true to my age, I don’t think. And all of a sudden, I feel like oh my God, I’m literally my age or older and I feel even older than that [laughs].