Emily

Brief Outline:

Emily is in her 40s and was working full-time as a teacher. She describes her ethnicity as white.

Emily caught Covid at the start of December 2021. She has had asthma throughout her adult life. As someone trained as a mental health first aider, she recognises the impact of Covid on teachers and children, not just herself. Although she still has many of her symptoms, she now feels she is ‘definitely in a much better place’ and she is regaining some of her natural optimism. Emily was interviewed in July 2022.

More about me...

Emily caught Covid in December 2021. Initially she was okay, although her sense of taste and smell disappeared within a few hours. Despite having asthma, she didn’t have a cough or a high temperature, but she was breathless. She spent a week in bed and felt wiped out for the whole month. By January, she thought she would be okay to go back to work but needed to ask for a phased return.

Emily still has difficulty filtering noise, finding words sometimes, managing cognitive challenges, multi-tasking, and her memory is not the same as it was. She can remember and think well in the moment, but often forgets details afterwards and finds solving problems difficult. She forgets things she has known how to do for years, like playing the piano. Her sense of taste and smell is still affected. Some foods she used to love taste terrible or have a horrible smell, but some tastes and smells are back to normal.

When she does too much, Emily ‘feels different’ the next day. She experiences aching legs and breathlessness, with overwhelming fatigue that feels like it is in her ‘core.’ She said it felt like ‘nothing else.’ She felt that some cognitive challenges, such as doing a jigsaw, were impossible and made her head hurt at the back of her brain. Although Emily is still experiencing symptoms, she feels in a better place now, both in terms of Long Covid and her outlook on life.

Before Emily got Covid, she used to play sport which she can no longer do. She walked and enjoyed socialising. Life was at 'full speed.’ In retrospect she thinks she was probably also working too hard and she now recognises the physical and emotional demands of her work as a teacher.

When Emily first tried to return to her work as a teacher, she struggled immediately. She was losing her voice and getting breathless. She built up her hours in a gradual return to work but, for a whole term, she needed to come home at lunchtime to sleep. She also needed to spend her whole weekends recovering. Her fatigue was overwhelming. Her doctor advised her to stop work to focus on her health. She has not yet been able to return to work.

Now that Emily has reduced her activities, other people say that they are able to see improvements, but she still has to limit her activities each day. For the last two months, Emily has kept a daily journal of her symptoms so she can map out the activities that affect her. She is returning to work in the next school term with a reduced workload. She is anxious about how her absence might be understood by children and parents, and what children and parents that she has not had contact with before will think about her abilities. She wonders whether she will be frustrated by the cognitive changes that she is experiencing, particularly her inability to filter noises in a noisy classroom.

Emily has stopped most activities and spends more time at home with her daughter. She has noticed a change in the pace of life and needs to plan how she uses her energy carefully. Long Covid prompted her to re-evaluate what is important in how she spends her time.

Emily has had asthma since she was a teenager and was very used to managing it. With all the stresses of Covid, and online teaching and mask-wearing when she was in the classroom, she felt that her asthma got worse.

Although she was a teacher with asthma, she didn’t have any priority for Covid vaccination beyond her age eligibility. Since having Covid she has had to learn about breathing properly again. She also uses a phone app to help with this. Other people had noticed that the quality of her breathing had changed and she was ‘gasping a lot.’ The asthma nurse at the GP surgery gave her a new inhaler and a booklet to help with breathing.

Early on in her Covid journey, Emily had had to call 111 because she felt so unwell. As well as the advice from the asthma nurse, she was seen by a GP about six weeks later. The GP listened but she found doctors just didn’t know how to help. She had a range of tests that all came back normal. One of the GPs she saw was worried about her mood. Emily accessed counselling via work and found this helpful.

Perhaps the most helpful thing a GP did for her was to put her in contact with someone nearby with Long Covid. She said this was a ‘game-changer.’ This helped her to feel less alone with her experience. She came across a book on Long Covid in the media which she said was another game-changer. She could relate to the case studies and they helped her feel that she wasn’t the only one going through this. She struggled with the lack of support in her area and that no one could tell her what was happening and when she would get better.

Emily uses social media for gathering information but finds it can ‘bring her down’ when she hears how long other people with Long Covid have struggled with their symptoms. She has been in touch with someone with access to a Long Covid clinic who passes on advice that she gets to her. She is frustrated that these clinics are not available where she lives and that, despite political promises, there is so little available to help people like her.

Emily has noticed the changes that Covid has brought about amongst the children in the school. She also talks about the demands on teachers during and after lockdown, and the expectations put on teachers during the pandemic.

Emily’s advice to others is to stop and take time to understand what’s happening to them, although she recognises that it might not be possible for some people to take time off work. She thinks it’s important that health professionals have time to listen and investigate the whole picture. The complexity of people’s symptoms mean this can’t be done in a 10-minute appointment. She also thinks that it would be useful to have one point of contact at a GP surgery with Long Covid expertise who can guide people through the different stages of their illness. She suggests there needs to be greater recognition of Long Covid as a ‘hidden disability.’

Emily has had asthma since she was a teenager. She noticed that her breathing got worse after having Covid and she “had to learn how to breathe again properly.”

So, the asthma, it’s, it’s funny though, my peak flow never changed the whole way. I would take my peak flow daily when I was unwell and it’s never changed, but it’s, it’s been a, it’s definitely been the breathlessness. A kind of a tightness. So, it’s always been much more up round my neck than down in my lungs.
 
So, voice, breathing. So, I mean I was breathing like that an awful lot, whereas, I’ve had to learn how to breathe again properly.so I’m using apps for that and yeah.
 
So when I was seeing the GP they kind of gave me a, well, we’ve got an asthma nurse at the clinic and then we’ve got all the other practitioners and because I already have asthma, I was never, I didn’t get seen for that, they just kept, not, I don’t, they would, you know, if I was saying I was having problems with my breathing, so they’d put me on to a new inhaler. And then that made the breathing easier, but what I didn’t under-, appreciate. So, people would say that they could hear my breathing being a problem.
 
Which I thought was a bit odd, you know, I would say, “Oh, my asthma’s got worse.” “Oh, yeah, I can hear it when you’re talking.” And I didn’t, I mean, I didn’t hear that at all. But then I was beginning to understand, again, when I stopped work, I realised I’d been gasping an awful lot and there was just, there was one thing that one of the nurses at the health centre gave me to just kind of work through, what was it? I think it was a, a kind of, a general anxiety in Covid kind of book let that I was just kind of meant to work through, and it was talking about finding things to be grateful for and, you know, all, lots of kind of things, which were, some were quite useful, and others were more relevant to lockdown than my current situation. But one of them was, it, it just talked about breathing. And so, it was me reading that that made me realise, hang on a minute, I’m not breathing like they are saying, I’m breathing like this [hunches shoulders].
 
So, then I started using the breathing, the Calm app, which I think is recommended in the Long Covid book as well. And, and started to just breathe properly [laughs].
 
But having the time not at work meant I could do that.
 

 

Emily said a book about Long Covid was a “game-changer for her”. She found the case studies and recommendations very helpful.

So this was interesting that you’re working with the Oxford University, because their Long Covid book, which I’ve got, so it’s that one [holds up book].Was, that was a game-changer completely because the, well it was, I think it was, there was, there was an article about it, I think in the Times, which my mum sent me and then, I mean, I pre-ordered that and it was a best seller before it was even published. Because there’s been nothing. You know, I went through that whole first term, my doctors were, you know, very they’d listen very well and I got, any time that I needed to speak to somebody at the health centre, they could get me appointments, you know. And so, if I phoned and said, you know, my breathing hurt for a while as well, and so I was put on tablets for my stomach. So, I’m taking gastric tablets at the moment. So, they were helpful, but they didn’t know what to do.
 
So, the book from Oxford was amazing. It has case studies, it’s got information that people, you know, think this, you know, just reading some of the stuff, it’s like, yeah, that’s exactly how I feel. So, that was great. And then just between that, so then I started using the breathing, the Calm app, which I think is recommended in the Long Covid book as well. And, and started to just breathe [laughs] properly.

 

Emily found it very helpful to meet in person with someone with Long Covid. This helped her feel to feel less lonely and like someone else finally understood.

The best thing actually that the doctor did was, she put me in touch with somebody else in the village who has Long Covid and that, so speaking to her and the validation of what she was, you know, we would look at each other and she would say, “Yeah, I see you, you know, I can see you doing the things that I do.”
 
And just having finally somebody who understood because it was very lonely. And I remember saying that to the doctor. Nobody else understood. You know, the doctors were doing their best, but they don’t understand.
 
I mean, the GP, bless her, when she was kind of going, “Mm, I think you might get—you might appreciate having a chat with her, but I can’t tell either of you what’s wrong with each other.”
 
Yeah, that’s it.
 
“And I need to phone her to say, could you,” and so, when we met, we both went, “Long Covid?” “Yes, right. Let’s get going [laughs].” But that, I mean—that was a game changer. Just speaking to somebody else who understood.

 

Emily’s advice to others is to “stop and take the time to understand what’s happening to you.” She said people should take time off work if they can afford to.

So, what would you say your main messages are for others who are affected by the condition?
 
Stop and take the time to understand what’s happening to you. I think the acceptance that, actually, this is just how things are, is really important and it’s not, you don’t want to have to accept it, but until you do, you’re not going to understand what’s happening to you. So just really, yeah, stopping. Take the time and if you’re, I mean, if you’re able to afford it. That’s the big problem. I’m lucky I’m in full-time employment with sick pay and I’ve been there long enough that I’ve had, you know, I know I still have a buffer as well, even though I’ve had three months and, obviously, being a teacher, I’ve just had the last six, you know, I’ve got a big chunk of time now, the way things have worked. So, if you can afford to stop and get your head round what’s happening, then do that.

 

Emily said it was important for healthcare professionals “to listen to the whole picture”. She used to take a list of symptoms to the GP and said she did not envy the positions GPs were in during the pandemic.

Listen to the whole picture, I think. And yeah, just, well, a ten-minute GP appointment is not long enough, you know, it’s only when you have, I mean, this length of time to really talk about things. So, just having, yeah, you know, so that’s why I would go into my appointments with great long lists and we would make sure, and they would, the doctors would always make sure I covered everything I’d written down. Partly because I’d forget what I was wanting to talk about [laughs].
 
So, you know, over the course of the few days before I went in, I’d have my list and I’d make sure, you know, I spoke about everything I wanted to. And, I mean, I don’t envy the GPs at the moment at all because they’ve got any number of things that they’re trying to learn about. There’s all the pressures in the NHS and, you know, I’ve been very grateful to all the time and support I’ve had from our health centre. But they are, in Scotland, it’s like they’ve got nowhere to go.
 
You know, they’re, I’m sure, as frustrated as we are because, you know, they’re trying to deal with the symptoms that they can see in front of you, and, you know, I’m, there was one point I was taking about four or five tablets a morning and you kind of go this is, this is crazy. But they’re managing symptoms they can see and it’s, it’s hard when, you know, if you’re normally able to just refer somebody on. And even if it might take, I don’t know, four months to get to the top of the wait, or even eight months, at least you know that you have pushed them on to the next person. Whereas, at the moment, there’s nowhere for them to pass us to.
 
And that must be really hard. And it’s I don’t know, yeah, just try to listen to the whole picture, but also, there’s no way that they can give you the time that you need to explain everything.