‘We’ve been affected by Covid since March’
AVALLEY couple have been struggling with the symptoms of Covid-19 since March.
Like many others, Caroline Eccles and David Pownall, from Waterfoot, were unable to be tested at the time they first fell ill as the government ceased testing on March 12.
They thought they would ‘just get it over with’ as they are both young and physically fit, but the days of illness became weeks; the weeks became months. Now, where some people counted lockdown days, they have counted Long Covid symptom days.
Caroline said: “The first proper symptoms started on March 20 with fatigue - totally incapacitating tiredness which even lying in bed didn’t seem to help with. And it just got worse from there.
“Shortness of breath followed soon after, with heart issues, tachycardia and palpitations following not long after.
“There were a few weeks where drawing breath was difficult, and we had genuine worries that one of us might not wake up when we went to bed,” she said.
“I called 111, but as our symptoms weren’t typical, we were pretty much brushed off and told to just stay at home.”
From 10,000 steps a day, Caroline struggled to climb the stairs and David, a hill runner, is uncertain if he will ever be fit enough to walk the fells, let alone run them. They are both now more than four months into the condition with no signs of returning to their normal.
Caroline joined Body Politic Slack – a Covid-19 support group and discovered an online Facebook group of 14,000 people who were also experiencing Long Covid.
Caroline, 41, and David, 40, run Huckleberry Films and the couple used their filmmaking skills to create a film entitled ‘Message in a
Bottle’, which Caroline narrated. It features photos of long haulers with placards listing their age, symptoms and how long they have been suffering.
It is on YouTube and Twitter and has been seen internationally by more than 53,000 people. It is calling for rehabilitation, research and recognition of the condition.
Caroline said: “We know about the people who are ill for just a couple of weeks, and we know about the very sick people who sadly die... but there’s thousands of us in the middle group, struggling for weeks and months and not knowing when or if we’ll be able to ever return to our ‘before’ lives.
“As the weeks go by there are gradual improvements, but they aren’t linear, and there’s a lot of relapses.
“I don’t know if my heart or lungs are permanently damaged or if I’ll make a full recovery, but I’m really hoping so. In the support groups I’m in, none of us really know what the long-term impact might be. We don’t know if we can get re-infected.”
In July, the NHS launched a ‘Your Covid Recovery’ service to expand rehabilitation treatments for people who have survived the virus but have outstanding issues, however it has yet to begin for community Covid patients.
A spokesman for the NHS England said the service would be available ‘later this summer’ and he confirmed it would be for patients who had been in hospital with Covid and who required further services to help recovery and also if GPs felt patients in the community had symptoms.
Asked whether research was being done to assess the numbers of people who are Long Covid and still suffering symptoms, the spokesman said NICE (The National Institute for Care and Health Excellence) was beginning to do research and more information was expected in the autumn.