Gulsoom

Age at interview: 31

Brief Outline:

Gulsoom is 31 years old and is Pakistani. She lives with her extended family and is a service development lead in a community organisation.
 
Gulsoom became concerned about Covid when her extended family became unwell with the virus. She feels that there should be more support for grieving families and clearer information about vaccination. Gulsoom was interviewed in March 2021. 

 

More about me...

Gulsoom remembers the first lockdown in the UK. She says she felt ‘scared’ because she did not know what was happening. However, through her job in the community, she had the opportunity to learn more about Covid. She remembers going to a park to share the information she had learnt. She gave people hand sanitisers and face-masks and explained the importance of staying at home. As time went on, she did not think much about Covid. As she puts it, “I didn’t know anyone close to me that had Covid. I didn’t hear anyone in the nearby neighbourhood that had passed away with Covid.”
 
Eventually, Gulsoom started hearing about people in her personal network who had Covid. She thought, “there must be some truth behind this because I know so many people now that are actually getting Covid.” When she heard about the large number of people dying from Covid, Gulsoom felt alarm bells ringing in her head. She also says that the pandemic became more real when her grandmother’s brother passed away in April 2020 from Covid.
 
When lockdown eased in June 2020, Gulsoom felt like life had become more normal. However, her father then started getting ill with cold and flu symptoms, and within the space of two weeks, started deteriorating. Gulsoom struggled to get medical support at first, but eventually got advice that her father must be rushed to the hospital. She said this was a sad moment because she could not go into the hospital with him due to government restrictions. Her father was also saying things like, “I want my children to come with me, I’m scared,” which made her worry even more. Gulsoom felt like this could be the last time she saw her father, because of rumours that people who went into the hospital with Covid were not likely to survive.
 
Gulsoom was allowed to see her father when he was put into an induced coma. She felt that her father would pass away, but her family had much more hope that he would survive because he was relatively young and healthy. When the nurses explained that her father was experiencing organ failure, her family accepted that he was going to pass away. However, they were also confused because Gulsoom’s father had detoriated so quickly.
 
Sixteen of Gulsoom’s family members have had Covid, and she says their symptoms were all quite different. Her main symptoms was fatigue. As she puts it, “I was doing something, and after ten minutes, my energy levels would just go. I would be so fatigued.” She says she also lost her self-esteem and confidence, as her symptoms lasted for about three or four months.
 
She says that her family need a lot of support going forward to cope with the trauma they experienced related to Covid. She would like there to be more support available to grieving families, and for hospitals to reconfigure rules around visitors for patients at the end of life. She also thinks that more effort needs to be made to explain why vaccination is important to some members of the community.

 

See more of Gulsoom's story.

Gulsoom’s friends and family told her not to get vaccinated in case it affected her fertility. Although she believed the vaccine is safe, she couldn’t decide what to do. In the end she refused vaccination for the time being.

I think even for me personally, I was offered the vaccine and I’ll be very honest with you, my close friends and my family members said to me, “Don’t have it.” To this day, I’ve not been vaccinated, even though I’m a keyworker because they’re like, “You’re not married and it’s going to affect your fertility.” And I don’t know but I believe that they wouldn’t really give you a vaccination that’s going to affect your fertility and so through my work and being on social webinars and read things and I believe, and I trust that the vaccination is safe. And I think with all the pressure of people saying, “Don’t take it. Don’t take it. Don’t take it.” Towards the end, I got a bit of fear. I’m a bit scared so I didn’t take it.
 
Because my dad passed away with Covid and because I am very active in the community now and I have a lot of contact with people because obviously, I deal with emergency cases and work with people, most vulnerable people that come to us, I’m doing it from the fact that I want to protect my mother. I want to protect my siblings but then I’m scared because they’re not in favour of me having the vaccination. So, a big part of me actually booked it in and said, this is for me to save my family from catching Covid because I am a keyworker, I’m probably out in the community more than anyone else in this household.
 
So, if anyone is going to bring anything in the house, it’s me so I need to protect them, so I’m going to take the vaccine and on the other half, when I spoke to my family, they were like, “No. No, we don’t think you should get it. We don’t think it’s safe.” Because of all the messages and all the things that have been circulating around social media, they’ve got it into their head that it’s not safe for me to take the vaccine. So, it was like, do I take it? Do I not? Do I take it? Do I not? Do I take it? Do I not? Then I just thought, you know what, right now, I’ll refuse the vaccination and then, in the coming weeks, if my mother takes it and they understand that my mother is okay, then they’ll be fine about me taking the vaccination.

 

Gulsoom said her fatigue made it difficult to do even simple tasks - like sending an email. She could no longer ‘multi-task' and she couldn’t work. Things got easier for her little by little.

So I think for the first two weeks, I was, for the first week, I couldn’t really do anything so I was really, really bad and then, after that, the symptoms got better and I was able to move around a little bit but the fatigue lasted at least six to eight weeks. Because going to the local supermarket, I’d come home and I’d fall asleep and also, you know, I started slowly going back to work because I was off work for quite a while. One because my dad was really ill in hospital and two, because I just couldn’t, physically couldn’t, go to work because I was so fatigued. But doing the simple task like sending an email before would take me five minutes, I’d take half an hour sending an email. I’d think, something is not right so it’s only when I rang the doctor. The doctor goes, “You’ve had, you’ve got Long Covid.” And I’m like to the doctor, “I’m going to the local Tescos, which is a ten minute walk, and I’m coming back and I’m literally falling asleep on the sofa and I feel like I’ve run a marathon.” And I was exhausted all the time and things weren’t getting acknowledged to me like my processing was so slow.

I: And then like how did you notice when you were feeling better?

I think I started feeling better when, because I’m a very, I’m a person that loves multi-tasking so I’ll be doing something and doing something else and I wasn’t able to do that and I think, when I slowly started to go for longer walks and coming home and not feeling like I need to go sleep. I weaned off my medication. I wasn’t really getting headaches all the time. I think I then started to realise, you know, I’m starting to get better, you know. I was starting to eat, so I I stopped eating certain foods because I just didn’t feel like eating. My appetite went so, then I started eating like proper meals and I was able to, you know, eat them without feeling sick afterwards. I was able to go for an hour walk without coming back and feeling like I’m physically drained and exhausted. So I think I slowly, slowly built myself up and then I went back to work and then I think, when I went back to work and I started multitasking and doing things and I started getting back into a routine and I thought, right, you know, I know I’m feeling a lot better now.

I: So it was like a gradual, things just got easier.

It was a very slow gradual thing. I think it took me at least three months to get back to my normal self.