Long COVID-19: Nurse Feels Older Than Her Age
A 23-year-old female Scotland nurse, Heather Campbell who had long COVID-19 has said she feels much older than her age.
Heather Campbell who was based in the orthopaedic ward at University Hospital Wishaw was mandated with washing and caring for patients.
The majority of patients on Heather’s ward were non-Covid but from time to time she cared for people with the virus. That was until one Friday last November when she started to feel under the weather. Heather recalled:
I just started feeling generally unwell, I had a temperature and a headache, I didn’t think much of it.
I had a PCR test on the Saturday because I was due back in work on the Monday but it was negative.
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I had another PCR test on the Monday and it was negative but, after liaising with work because I had symptoms, I had to isolate and it was the Tuesday or Wednesday that my test came back positive. I was really unwell for three weeks after that and I’ve never really recovered.
Eight months on and Heather is still struggling with everyday tasks like getting out of bed, having a shower or even climbing the stairs. She said:
I’m so breathless, sometimes I have to stop four or five stairs from the top.
I’ve got inhalers now for breathlessness which I’ve never had, I don’t have asthma, I don’t have any health conditions.
I get heart palpitations if I do too much, if I push myself, and have a shower and dry my hair. I get fevers every day.
Heather says she is a completely different person from who she was eight months ago. She explained:
I never would have expected at 23 to be so unable to do things that before were so easy.
I don’t feel 23 anymore, I feel so much older.
I’m missing out on so much, especially with my friends and stuff. With restrictions easing they are starting to go back out and I can’t go.
Heather was due to get her vaccine in the last week of June but days before she again tested positive for Covid.
It has made her anxious about going out and she wants other young people to realise that the virus can become debilitating at any age, with vaccination an important protection.
Heather said encourages to do all they can to avoid contracting the virus.
She who qualified last year and got the job six months later says she is taking every day as it comes, concentrating on her recovery, and her most important goal is to get back to work.
More: Pindula News; BBC
