Ex-marine’s fight with long Covid

A former Royal Marine from Bath has spoken about the “devastating” effect long Covid has had on him and his wife.

Steve Legge, 48, caught coronavirus in November and has been in crippling pain ever since. He coowns a small property maintenance business and “can’t lift like he used to” or “hold a drill”.

He said: “My liver and kidneys and lungs are swelling up and pressing on my nerves. I was in so much pain last week staff at the hospital thought I had a blood clot. One minute you’re fine, the next you can’t get out of bed.

“I’ve been diagnosed with severe inflammatory disease and that’s caused a lot of nerve damage. I have swollen hands and pins and needles down my arms. My liver and kidneys and lungs are swelling up and pressing on my nerves, so I have pain running from my shoulders down my back.”

His wife also caught the virus in November, after visiting her mother just before lockdown. Unbeknownst to her, a member of the extended family had recently been in the house and passed Covid onto her mother, who has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Mrs Legge, a cardiologist at the Bristol Royal Infirmary, was “only inside the house for a few minutes” Mr Legge explained.

“Three or four days later she started getting symptoms and both our tests came back positive. It just shows you how easy it is to catch. I had a slight loss of taste and smell, and I was feeling achy all over, like the flu, but it wasn’t that bad for me,” Mr Legge said. However, just four days after she started showing symptoms, his wife took a turn for the worse. Mr Legge said she fell asleep on the sofa one evening and, when he tried to wake her up, she was unresponsive.

He called an ambulance and Mrs Legge was rushed to the hospital. Doctors checked her fluid levels and found that coronavirus had severely dehydrated her. His wife was sent home again that evening, but Mr Legge, inset, said it was awful to see his wife still in pain all these months later. “Her liver is swelling up and I have seen her in tears with the pain. You can’t not care for your wife when she’s sick, but then you’re sick too, so you’re not doing a very good job,” he said.

Mr and Mrs Legge are now being closely monitored as a case study for long Covid. The exmarine said he was fit and healthy before he caught the virus, but now he couldn’t get out of bed some days.

“My doctor has been brilliant, he’s been trying me on all sorts of medicines. At the minute I am on medicine for nerve damage, but anti-inflammatories don’t really stop it - I still get severe pains like someone has punched me in the back,” he explained.

The day he spoke to us, Mr legge had been working and by 3pm he said that he could feel his condition catching up with him.

He said: “I had no previous health conditions and I have been fit and healthy - now I’m on sleeping tablets and everything. As an ex-royal Marine, I’m used to being fit so this is devastating.”