Wake me up when I’m recovered….. Long Covid
By Justine Hodgson
(Note: I was 11months in with Long Covid when I wrote this. It’s now 14 months on and there have been improvements but with those improvements post exercise malaise and other auto-immune responses have increased along with a handful of other consistent ups and downs. I will add an updated version I guess, Part 2 soon and share what I have changed daily to enhance recovery in certain areas. No complete cure yet and nowhere near who I was before. In all fairness, I am liking the subtle changes in myself that have been for the better even in this L C storm).
I thought I owed it to my blog to drop my thoughts down since contracting Long Covid, so here it is!
So here I am 11 months on from contracting Covid-19, still with an ongoing extensive list of strange and sometimes scary symptoms. Some times I’m comforted by the support of my GP and various consultants but for the majority of the time I”m left trying to figure out my own recovery when traditional medicine doesn’t have all the answers!
I’m passed explaining the lengthy list of symptoms or trying to fight Covid-19, there is no fighting only acceptance. I see it as my job to continue to understand how my body needs to find it’s way back to optimal health and to take my time rewiring and remapping a route, a route that has been literally torn up and scattered in all the wrong areas of my functioning map. We can’t try to treat this virus in any normal way because many of us would come out with about 4 different diseases/illnesses under one umbrella of Long Covid.
So forget anything you know and watch your step as you map out your recovery, Covid-19 is a sneaky little virus that seems to whip you back down just when you think your recovery has started to pick up momentum. Usually the fall guy is exercise or simple daily household chores, too much histamine high foods or… or…. or… One thing is for certain, no one day is the same. Food intolerances have joined the party and anyone who wears a watch with a heart monitor on it, take it off, it will send you crazy watching the heart rate spike to a vigorous heart rate when you’re sat down or it’s dropping and going in the other direction and dropping too low. Most of us have all been backwards and forwards to A and E with this one scary symptom alone.
What’s important to remember is that each and every immune system has its own unique makeup and what’s working for one is not necessarily the right way forward for the next person. It’s important for anyone who states they are fully recovered from Long Covid that you celebrate this but also realise that there are still those who are on a longer journey and may have more deep rooted complications still lingering from the initial virus.
Long Covid has many layers depending on your own initial dance with it when it infected you, so some have organ damage and an additional long list of crazy symptoms. These symptoms don’t all happen at the same time, they come in clusters around the other main organ issues you may have.
Muscle weakness and shakes
Muscle wastage
Insomnia
Ulcers, gums and teeth being affected
Hair loss
Red/tired eyes
Blinding headaches with intense light sensitivity
Blurring eyesight and changes in prescription within a short amount of time
Heavy tight chest along with constant breathing difficulties and low peak flow
Some lose taste and smell a majority get random strange tastes and smells
Chronic Fatigue that comes hand in hand with insomnia
Bladder issues
Exercise triggers
Gut issues which we all know without a healthy gut then disease and illness will persist
New food allergies especially high histamine levels in foods due to the Gut imbalance
Head soreness, ladies this sensation is like taking a high pony tail out and that feeling you’re left with in the scalp. But only there has been no high pony tail, it’s just sore if you run your hand through your head.
Heart palpitations, automatically going into fight or flight system when sat reading a book or in my case during ‘Meditation”. I ended up in A and E and that was 8 months after first contracting Covid-19.
Heart irregularity and strange vibrations
Due to low levels of serotonin, anxiety and depression are constantly challenging your ability to balance your mood.
Covid nail
Skin sensitivity
Sore throat
Husky dry and fatigued throat/lose of voice
Lump sensation in the throat
Regular swollen glands affecting the whole body
Excessive bloating
Lower back pain from inflammation
Blotchy red toes/feet
Weight gain or weigh loss
Dry mouth/nose/throat
Burning smoke smell!!
So the list is a very long and never ending cycle of highs and lows and moments of relief only to start a cycle all over again. Not everyone gets all of the above but they will have their fair share that’s for sure.
Some months Long Covid patients are able to walk out in nature, perhaps to a favourite spot and just sit and feel a sense of achievement and gratitude and other months they hardly leave the house. It’s not playing the same rules in recovery like any other virus or disease and it certainly is not something that will be better simply by eating more greens and doing more exercise, it’s not playing to that drum at all!
For a lone time I seemed to go through a cycle of grief and a long cycle due to losing my health and fitness, something I had invested in the whole of my life from a small child taking ballet, horse riding, competing in ballroom dancing. I went on from being a long distance runner too as a teenager into becoming a very successful Fitness Professional and Wellness Expert in adulthood. I retrained as a hypnotherapist and stress management professional and thank god I did, for this is what has kept my mental attitude rock solid! 90% of the time that is if I’m really honest. Crying is part of the healing process and boy have I cried, sometimes in frustration at the body I no longer recognised or sadness of lost opportunities while the world carried on living and I was left behind to figure out the shit storm going off inside my body!
So here I was with all the tools to usually be able to heal and help others having to throw everything I knew about the immune system and start from scratch. The immune system is attacked then scrambled and thrown around and makes you feel like it’s ended up in the wrong areas of the body and not where it should be at all. Completely out of balance and now its wiring isn’t working and all the systems are jumbled and not working together as they once did, you have organ damage personalised to your own body and a system that doesn’t know which way is up, all while still trying to fight and defend you from being killed off! It has a leaky battery in one sense and can’t make enough energy to keep you upright for very long before your battery dies and you have to go back to the beginning again. I can’t help but wonder what it must have looked like when this virus went off in my body, because if I could have seen it then I probably would have been more petrified than I already was. I’m now looking at my body and going, well fucking done for not letting me die. Thank you, Thank you and THANK YOU!
Some symptoms over time improve and other symptoms take their place or become less of an offender and you seem to just live with them and forget they are there until someone else mentions it on a blog or FB and you go oh yeah that’s me too. Any one recovering from Long Covid should not doubt for one minute their strength and their gusto!! If I hadn’t been going through this I would never have understood the absolutely fuckery of it all and how relentless it can be. So I salute every single one of you who may be reading this and have the utmost respect for you and your recovery.
As for the positive side of looking into recovery, a large majority have start to see improvements with this new supplement stack of Niacin, Vitamin D, Vitamin C, Quercetin ,NAC, Antihistamines. Theres also a large majority going all out on an antihistamine diet, gluten and dairy free and fasting to try to eradicate the infected cells. Some have started to feel benefits, however I think like everything with this virus, perseverance , patients and time and as much self care and love you can send yourself the better! In fact it’s imperative. Your environment needs to be supper chilled with no external environmental stress so try not to throw too much at once at your already confused immune system and your parasympathetic and sympathetic systems.
So back to grief, this was something I sat with and fell apart with then started to slowing put the pieces I understood back together. After the shock of having my health rattled in such a huge way and then realising I was grieving my old lifestyle and my ability to work full time, I was also struggling with my identity and my role to play in the world, “what use or good was I if I had nothing to offer” I have always been a high achiever and always had projects and goals insight and I was used to solving any lows in my life and coming up stronger. With this virus, using everything I knew just wasn’t getting me anywhere it was making it all worse. So I sat with it and went through the grief and lose, also dealt with the anger of ‘why me’ while so many of my fit pro friends were sailing through the pandemic, the shame of being caught out by this deadly virus and not recovering as fast as my friends or I had expected. For someone who used to be called the Machine’ back in my day as a fit pro this was shocking and puzzling.
The day did come, the day of accepting my circumstances and trying not to have all the answers, accepting that right now I didn’t have all the pieces to the puzzle to be able to find the solution, one day though I would and that was good enough for me!
So I worked on what I could do and learned that we need to give ourselves permission to not have it all figured. Deal with what we do know and what we can do about that. In the words of Whitney Houston, I’m taking it ‘Step by Step’ and ‘Day by Day’.
So I try to keep my daily routine, when possible and learn to have a lot of compassion for myself and this situation. Even during the highs and lows I can now maintain a very healthy mental attitude which keeps my stress levels as even as possible as too much excitement or stress makes everything worse on top of a very sensitive nervous system!! The Vagus Nerve has also been thrown into turmoil so it’s worth adding something into recovery either through specialist treatments or adding it into self care routines at home.
With a yoga and nutritional disease prevention back ground I already have the tools to help myself here but the rules have changed slightly! I’m also a hypnotherapist and access certain brain frequencies through hypnotherapy and meditation to ease a majority of my days. No cure yet, but trying to stay on steady ground is a good outcome at the moment for me.
I’m just coming out of a relapse due to stupidly having some champagne at Christmas!! Otherwise this is how I’m investing in my recovery, I was already doing a majority of everything listed before getting the virus but it’s been ramped up big time!
Low histamine diet…. This is beyond clean plant living guys!!
Alternate nostril breathing
Lymph nodes/meridian linked gentle movements and stretching — think Yin/Kundalini gentle practice and keep it to 20/30 mins max. Linking Vagus Nerve exercises into my own practice here too.
Meditation and Sound Bowl session — healing frequencies
EFT and energy psychology — 3 slow gentle exercises usually done on first waking up
Self hypnosis before bed, this is my own recording connecting with my immune system…. Trying to straighten it out!!
Listening to Podcasts that make me LAUGH!
Reflexology while in the bath :)
As soon as I can I’m adding a weekly massage into my week.
I listen to a lot of music and sing, when my voice allows it!
I Avoid social media and limit it to 1 or 2 days a week when I check in on the Long Covid recovery FB page. Probably only for 30 mins.
Limit screen time, so I allow my eyes and mind to relax away form external noise and light
When I feel well enough I go to my favourite spot, sit on my favourite bench and sit in amazement at the beautiful countryside.
I practice gratitude a lot!!
So that’s my brain dump and it really is a brain dump, I’m not sure if my brain fog has held off and done me proud or it’s a load of jumbled sentences not making sense to anyone else but me.
Oh well, Better out than in!!
To all those recovering form Long Covid, this is not an easy ride, so a sense of humour is key to rolling through the shit!
Big love Jx
