Early on last year doctors didn't know what to make of it when people complained about strange ailments - extreme fatigue, joint inflammation, brain fog, chest tightness, dizziness, shortness of breath to name just a few, that had suddenly descended on them. Some people remembered having flu-like symptoms a short while before, but because they weren't hospitalised or possibly even confined to their beds, they assumed it couldn't be Covid - and if they did wonder if it might be (perhaps a mild case) they were finding they couldn't get tested, anyway, as the tests were, understandably, reserved for front-line workers. I know because I tried.
Talking to my GP about the debilitating pains in my shoulders, elbows, wrists, hands and fingers - the inflammation in my right ankle, the memory / concentration difficulties and the fatigue that was disrupting my life on a daily basis, was met with the usual diligence and blood tests. When these showed nothing out of the ordinary, more tests followed.
The markers in my blood were normal - so what was happening to my body? Was it my cancer causing these pains and the tiredness? I'd had fatigue before with the hormone and radiation therapy for prostate cancer, but nothing like this.
Weeks passed and the fatigue and upper-body joint pains were still with me - the inflammation and pain in my right ankle, too, all of which meant no gym visits and I now needed a walking stick to get around.
Then, slowly, a condition called Long Covid began to gain ground in the media and I found people were suffering many of the symptoms that I was experiencing - people who had had covid in many different forms of seriousness from four or five days of feeling 'unwell' to those hospitalised.
