<
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-27/long-covid-mecfs-health-damaging-relationships-crisis/103205564>
'Sarah* fully expected that catching COVID would be a disaster for her health.
As a health researcher, she'd followed the science of SARS-CoV-2 more closely
than many people — she understood how serious the pandemic was.
She also has a rare form of muscular dystrophy, a genetic disease that causes
her muscles to weaken and waste over time, and struggles with asthma and
migraines. "My quality of life was already really bad, so I'd rather have died
than get long COVID," says Sarah, who caught the virus from her husband in May
2022. "And then it happened."
But she wasn't prepared for how quickly long COVID would crack her marriage of
almost 20 years.
After getting over her acute infection, suddenly Sarah was grappling with a
completely new set of symptoms: fatigue "on a whole new level", brain fog that
made her previously sharp thinking feel soupy and slow, shortness of breath and
muscle pain — the usual list so-called long haulers report. She has pushed
herself to keep working part-time from her home in Canberra, but spends the
rest of her time resting, taking medication and supplements, hoping she'll
recover.
While her husband can carry on planning catch-ups with friends and interstate
work trips, Sarah can only take one day at a time. Her lack of energy and
weakness means she can't go on holidays with him — she can't even go out to
dinner with him or watch him play sport like she used to. And because he
travels so frequently, she often has to isolate from him at home, so she
doesn't catch COVID again and risk her condition getting worse.
"We're living two separate lives — it's like we're housemates, not really
husband and wife," she says. "Long COVID has basically taken away my best
friend and my soulmate. It's like somebody just ripped half of me away."'
Via Violet Blue’s
Pandemic Roundup: December 28, 2023
https://www.patreon.com/posts/pandemic-roundup-95419817
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
