One of the things about having a condition causing long term fatigue during a pandemic, is not being able to tell when you are ill. At least to start with.
What I mean is:
- If I have a hacking cough or a streaming cold, it's far enough outside my normal to be pretty clearly 'I'm ill'.
- But at the point most people start to feel unwell, I'm still well within my 'normal' range. That 'I think I'm going down with something' level, for me, is just a normal day. It's not even a close to a bad day. It could be caused by the weather, or hormones, or doing too much yesterday, or doing a little bit much over the past few months, or stress, or sitting still too long, or lack of sleep....or I might have an infection brewing!
Being able to take LFTs on days like these has been incredibly useful. I can take one before shopping, or going to church, or meeting friends - and get a reasonable idea as to whether I might be infectious (and should stay home) or not.
But now the free LFTs are being taken away, I soon won't even be able to do that level of 'checking whether it's my disability or COVID'.
Combine that with knowing in a very real and practical way what 'long term fatigue' is like to live with, and I REALLY doesn't want to pass COVID on. So far millions of people have long covid, of which long term fatigue is a very common symptom. So for me, long covid isn't a theoretical possibility that must be unpleasant, it is a real possibility, and one in which I have personal experience of the potentially devastating consquences of some of its common symptoms.
As a result I am more cautious than many of the healthy people out there. If you've not spent months barely able to stand due to crushing fatigue, then its very hard to imagine what it's like. I know what it is like because I've lived it. And I am willing to go a long way to minimise the chance of other people going through that.
So expect me to continue with a level of social distancing and mask wearing. Especially if I'm a little under the weather and *think* it's probably not COVID, but I'm not entirely sure. It's not because I live in constant fear of the virus, it's because I have a window onto what living with some of the after-effects would be like, and when I weigh that against the mild inconvenience of wearing a mask (when my PoTS can cope with it) and social distancing, the mild inconvenience wins every time.
I love your attitude and admire it.
ReplyDeleteI am (fortunately), so far, healthy and triple-vaxxed. I do get hayfever - coughing and sneezing - intermittently, but I've not had C-19 (symptomatic C-19 at any rate) as far as I know and as much as I 've done LFTs, but hate the thought that I might pass it on to somebody - anybody! - young or old, largely because of the possibility of long covid.
I have a couple of friends with chronic fatigue-type illnesses, and went through a period of several months, some 40 years ago, of a post-viral fatigue after I caught chicken-pox in my 30s - and would prefer not ever to risk a repetition, or be 'responsible' for anyone else doing so.
So I too will continue to both wear a mask and social distance when out and about, especially if/when I feel under the weather from hayfever.
I confess I have stockpiled a few packs of LFTs; my local pharmacy is still giving them out and last time I went for a box, the dispenser said 'it's good to have a few spare'.
Best wishes!