Helen

Gender: Female
Ethnicity: White British
Background: Helen is in her 50s and is White British. She works as a midwife. Helen caught Covid at a charity cycling event after the first lockdowns eased. She experienced severe headaches and sinus pain, but did not have breathing issues. Helen’s symptoms continued for several months after testing negative.

Helen first heard about the Covid-19 pandemic at work. She remembers wondering what on earth is this when she saw a poster warning about travelling to Wuhan. As lockdowns were put in place, her role as a midwife switched from office work to supporting clinical work. Helen worried about her elderly parents catching Covid, but felt that she would probably be ok.

After the easing of the first lockdown measures, Helen returned to some of her usual activities. Helen thinks that she contracted Covid after taking part in a cycling challenge for charity. She felt achey and developed a cough by the time she got to work the next day. A PCR test confirmed that she was positive for Covid. Helen’s son and partner later also tested positive for Covid. While she was sick, Helen experienced severe headaches, coughing, and sinus pain.

Helen continued to experience symptoms for seven months after testing negative. She struggled with getting back to the active lifestyle she had before, and at times felt desperate to feel bette. Symptoms like brain fog and memory lapses made it difficult to perform well in her job. She also sought support from her GP, who eventually prescribed her Valium to help with low mood and sleep issues.

Helen doesn’t feel that she has fully recovered from Covid yet. She still finds herself forgetting words and has noticed some issues with nerve sensation. Helen reflects that Covid has been: more than just a virus for two weeks, it’s a lot more than tha.

Helen was sensitive to medication and had almost every symptom of the Covid vaccine listed in the information booklet.

I should’ve read the booklet that they’d given me at the time, and I didn’t, I thought I could see it. I had every symptom, except one, I can’t remember what the one was, as in, there was one that I didn’t have, but yeah. I’m sensitive, whether this is anything to do with it, I’m really sensitive to any sort of medication.

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Helen’s friend didn’t want to meet up with her because of a lingering cough after having Covid.

I’d been isolating for almost three, well I’d had the virus almost over three weeks, and , there was a, an event in, where I live and I wanted to watch a swim and I I knew my friend was going. I said “Oh, can I, shall I meet you there?” And she was like, “I don’t want to meet you”, she said, “you’re still coughing”. And I said, “But I, I’ve had it weeks now I’m allowed out.” No she just wouldn’t, she just wouldn’t. And that, I cried.

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Helen’s daughter came to collect the dog when Helen and her son were too ill to look after it.

And initially, we, my son said “Oh look I’ll walk him early in the morning, when I haven’t got to meet people.” But he was so unwell, he couldn’t so I had to ring my daughter to come and get the dog. Oh, she had a mask on with like two, I don’t know where she had this mask. She had a procedure covering literally there, she had gloves on, I had to leave the dog outside in, he’s got a small crate. She then anti-bacted all of the crate, threw away the bed that was in it, and bought, and she’d bought a new one. And then she anti-bacted the dog.

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Helen is a midwife working in a diverse area and noticed lots of deaths.

Because we’re in [city], we do quite a few ethnic groups. So we did have a few that were quite poorly and then we had to deliver them and they were sick in, and we’ve got different hospitals, from where maternity is to the main intensive care. So yeah we did have quite a few vulnerable women. But not extensively, the community I live in there was an awful lot of people really poorly and a lot of deaths.

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Helen, a community midwife, found it troubling to not be able to conduct her safeguarding role.

So my background is as a community midwife, low risk care, so I started doing 12 hour shifts again on our local freestanding birth centre. So my meetings as a safeguarding midwife were sort of put on hold, but I was maintaining that role as well. But it was, not too bad at the start, I was working, sitting in the birth centre, patients coming in, then we were starting having to put lots of restrictions in place, partners weren’t being seen. And this is probably a lot to do with health, working as a safeguarding midwife I was obviously concerned about women not being seen, domestic violence.

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