Laurie

Gender: Female
Ethnicity: White American
Background: Laurie is 59 years old and is White American. She is married with two children and is a professor of music and a musician. Laurie caught Covid early in the pandemic, which then developed into long Covid. The worst symptom for her was brain fog, which interrupted her ability to work. When she had her first vaccine this helped with her long Covid symptoms.

Laurie went to Italy in early 2020. She remembers feeling quite calm as the majority of Covid cases were on the opposite side of the country. As she put it, I didn’t think about it too much Soon after, one of Laurie’s colleagues who had also travelled with her to Italy felt unwell. Laurie’s colleague thought that this could have been Covid

After a few weeks, Covid cases in the USA started to rise. Laurie started to worry for her son who was attending an American university. Her son travelled to the UK and a few days later started to get Covid symptoms. A couple days later Laurie also started to feel unwell. They both had high temperatures, sore throats, and felt low in energy. As she puts it, I was shaking, I was feeling so unwell by this point, I was really running on fumes

Laurie was not overly worried about potentially having Covid at first. She says that she is generally very healthy and has no conditions that could make her recovery harder. However, when her symptoms persisted for several months she realised that she might have long Covid. The worst impact for her was the brain fog;, which meant that she struggled to continue her work as an academic and musician. Her symptoms improved after taking the vaccine.

Judy thinks that ‘traditional’ gender roles can make it hard for women with long Covid to get enough rest.

Age at interview 59

After all you know, this would’ve been at the beginning of March, I finally had a referral to the cardiac clinic, prescribed me ivabradine, and I had my first vaccine. I went straight from the cardiac clinic to have my first vaccine. First vaccine felt like going through the whole thing, my entire year. And then suddenly I thought ‘oh, hang on.’ It was like the sun had come out like the cloud had gone from my brain. And I suddenly felt like myself again…

Stayed on the ivabradine but I still felt you know something, there was a very concrete gear change, when I had, when I got the vaccine, first vaccine. Then it took about 6 weeks, then the vaccine bounce stopped, but by the time the second one came around again, and I had the second one in June, the same thing happened. And I was able to come off the ivabradine. And my heart rate is now normal, my blood pressure and I am able to do you know, kind of 5/6000 steps in a day, maybe even more.

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Judy said she felt like she had been on a confusing rollercoaster with her Long Covid. Seeing a chronic fatigue specialist had given her hope and a belief that she will get better in time.

Age at interview 59

I walk everywhere. I’m a 10,000 step a day woman, I can you know [laughs], I really had to and this walk, which would have been easily manageable, 20 minutes down 20 minutes back for me, was almost you know, I just, I collapsed into bed after that and I thought ‘oh, this isn’t good.’ And then just right the way through the Summer, random things kept going on, and I stopped being able to drink alcohol, I couldn’t concentrate. The worst thing for me, although the physical symptoms were annoying, the worst thing for me was that my cognitive abilities just didn’t seem to be coming back, and cognitive work absolutely exhausted me. I think the things that I was experiencing, the things that I was left with after the fevers stopped spiking were breathlessness, tachycardia, and… yeah, the brain fog the brain fog, the cognitive impairment was just, was really, really distressing to me as an academic, as a writer, thinker, supervisor, whatever.

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Judy found that much of the guidance although well written lacked the practical detail she was looking for.

Age at interview 59

I was freezing, absolutely freezing with three duvets on you know, and woolly socks and flannel pyjamas. I could not, get warm I was so cold, but my temperature was 40 degrees, it was really, really high I was thirsty all the time. I know at one point I brought a 500ml water bottle in to the room with me. and at one point, I counted the number of times that I filled that water bottle, and I filled it 12 times in 24 hours, so that’s six litres of water that I needed. I was so thirsty, my skin cracked I was just totally dehydrated.

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