Helen
Helen is 38 and lives with her husband and son. She works part-time as an Academic Researcher. Ethnicity: White English.
Helen is certain she caught Covid in March 2020, but there was no testing available at the time to confirm this. Over time her symptoms fell into a “relaxing/remitting type thing,” where she would have some better days, but then experience flare ups. Helen was interviewed in October 2021.
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Helen is certain she caught Covid in March 2020 (before the 1st lockdown), although there was no testing available at the time to confirm this. She says her symptoms started with a strange sensation “like there was a burning in my windpipe.” She attended a work event the next day and her symptoms persisted, although she wondered at the time if it was just indigestion.
When Helen returned from the event, she describes feeling “absolutely exhausted” but initially put this down to having been away with work. When her symptoms deteriorated further and she started coughing, experiencing an upset stomach and persistently high temperature, she thought “Okay, actually have I got Covid?”
Helen describes the following weeks as like being in “this weird limbo” where her symptoms persisted. She says that although her husband, sister and son all had similar symptoms around the same time, they all got better.
Helen tried to carry on with her daily activities and caring for her son but found this more and more challenging when the 1st lockdown happened and once again her symptoms deteriorated, and she also developed nerve problems. She says “...our whole lives were just upended really” and describes the whole period as a “very anxiety-inducing time.”
She initially took 4 weeks off work, but after returning she realised she would have to take a much longer period off due to her Long Covid symptoms. Around this time people started talking about what is now known as Long Covid and Helen describes this as being “like a light in the dark…this is something that happens to people, this is not just about me.”
Helen undertook various investigative tests to rule things out and says over time her symptoms fell into a “relaxing/remitting type thing,” where she would have some better days, but then experience flare ups.
She says she had to get a lot of help and support from her family at the time as she was struggling to cope. She describes having had some cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) which encouraged her to stop looking at online forums about Long Covid and helped her to develop some practical strategies to support her home life.
More recently Helen’s been starting to feel much better and has been able to return to work part-time. Although she says she doesn’t feel completely better yet (and still has bad days), she says her family have adapted and adjusted to the situation.
Helen said that there was just something about her conversations with the GP that made her think that she was being taken seriously.
Helen said that there was just something about her conversations with the GP that made her think that she was being taken seriously.
Yeah and my GP was really open to having those discussions with me as we found out more and then the other thing I did that was really helpful was that I had some cognitive behavioural therapy so my GP was great in that I didn’t want to be sort of labelled, ‘Oh, you know, it’s all in the head kind of thing,’ but I actually found, I had a really good experience with the CBT. I know not everybody does but one of the things that happened during the CBT that was great was they told me to stop looking at the forums [laughs].
So once I started seeing the same GP and having that continuity that was amazing, like I’d not, I’ve had a really great relationship with my GP but my initial consultations were really difficult because I was speaking to a different GP each time just because of the fact that I was calling on the days when I felt the worst and my GP wasn’t necessarily there and I used to see a particular GP and then it just so happened that I got the GP I’m now with and she just, there was just something about the conversation that made me think she’s taking it seriously. It’s not that the others weren’t, the pandemic meant that everything was just up in the air and so then I just kept calling back and speaking to her each time but I think what was good about it is she always made me feel that she had time for me because sometimes I was ringing once a week and at least twice a week, at least twice a fortnight and I was conscious, you know, I work in primary care research, I was thinking, ‘She’s going to think ‘Oh my gosh,’ but she never made me feel that way and I remember one particular conversation where I dropped my son at school, I got back and she called me just as I got back and I remember saying to her, “I just, I don’t know I’m ever going to go back to work. I don’t know how I’m ever going to do anything that I did before,” and I was really upset and she was just so lovely and said, you know, “Even if you have to live with, you know, disability or fatigue for the rest of your life, you will get back to work, people get back to work, you know, they live relatively normal lives,” and it was that conversation that really sustained me I think.