Long Covid

As some of you know or have seen by now, I've been pretty absent and off the bike due to Long Covid. It's almost been three months now since I was actually sick, and it's been a pretty crazy experience. That I'm actually able to write this piece of text now means I'm doing much better. Writing or thinking constructively for an extended amount of time has been one of the most difficult things in these past three months.

I want to post something about this because I, of course, started this whole account and my website with the idea of doing long rides and writing about my adventures. Which I unfortunately haven't been able to do (yet). This current ‘intermezzo’ has forced me to take a break from my plans, but that doesn’t make it less part of my story. The following text might not be my most well-structured one – because brain issues – so I hope you’ll all forgive me for that. That said, here I go 😊

WHAT’S HAPPENING?

Long Covid, to me one of those things I've heard about, but never really gave that much attention. I've honestly – and regrettably – doubted whether it was an actual thing. Wondering if people weren’t ‘just’ mentally struggling with the whole pandemic in general. Well, now I know that it is, very real. And it's a weird little bitch.

On January 14^th I had a weird feeling in my throat that reminded me of Covid. I bought a bottle of cough syrup, used it as prescribed, and hoped for the best. It went away over the next few days, so I considered myself cured. – This is how getting sick usually goes for me: I have one day where I’m like: “Oh, shit”, and then I don’t actually get sick.

Not this time, unfortunately. On the 18th during the day, I could feel my nasal mucosa slowly swelling up and I cancelled the upcoming morning’s cycling plans. The next day I had a slight and short fever, and then I started to improve over Monday until Wednesday. On Thursday I went back to work.

Now, I'm not writing this down to be dramatic – things are what they are, and I'll get better. I'm writing this for the people who have been wondering what's been going on, and for the people who have been judgy. (The latter group would have included me just these 3 months ago, so no biggie!!)

That Thursday (January 23^rd), I had to work a dispatching shift. So, no cycling. I ‘just’ had to answer the phone, reply to emails, and plan every courier’s route as efficiently as possible. Something that quickly proved to be very difficult. I kept feeling like I was dizzy, a feeling I now think to be the result of extreme fatigue. It wasn’t dizziness in the sense of physical disorientation, but more mental (or cognitive) disorientation. Like the working memory of my brain had been reduced by a significant percentage. Luckily it was quiet this day, and I barely had to make any calls. It took me the full day to decipher one long email, which – also luckily – didn’t have any time pressure on it.

I put myself on sick for the next day, and expected to recover over the weekend. On Monday I went to work again, cycling a short route and doing some different office work after. I kept having the same cognitive struggles, but stayed at work until I really wasn’t functioning anymore. Tuesday is my day off, so I’d use that day for recovery, and try again on Wednesday. By then it seemed to have gotten worse; sorting the mail in the morning usually takes me 30-45 minutes, but I now needed the full hour that is scheduled for it. The deliveries I did after were slow, and traffic was confusing. I forgot something and had to call the day’s dispatch about it, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to clearly explain to him what was going on. When I got home I was too exhausted to even sit. I took me about six horizontal hours to recover from 2,5 hours of plain routine work I’ve done many many times before.

I texted my doctor, who told me symptoms like these were either caused by stress or by aftermath from a viral infection. She told me I must have never really been sick before (ok, thank you for invalidating some of my lived experience!!), and that all I could do was wait. No tests, nothing. If things weren’t any better in two weeks, I’d have to reach out again.

I tried to read some stuff on Long Covid, but it was impossible to understand any text longer than three sentences. I was in absolute limbo, working through beginner level Swedish puzzles to keep myself entertained, needing a lot of breaks while doing so.

The things I struggled with in these two weeks (and up until now):

• Processing or participating in communication; reading, writing, speaking.
• Processing sensory stimuli; understanding traffic, listening to music could even feel tiring.

(To say I have problems processing multi-faceted information also feels correct, but when is information ever single-faceted once your brain starts to interpret it?)

An example from last week to sketch:

I asked a colleague to take care of something for me, but unfortunately they made an error in their agenda. That meant a new person showed up at our office needing to be shown around, and no one was actually there to help them, but me. I had been the one they’d been corresponding with, so they thought I could help them out as well. All I had to do was tell someone the basics of our company. A 5-10 minute talk about something I love to do in a place I've worked for almost 5 years. And I couldn't even explain in proper sentences why I couldn’t be the one to help them out.

My time has been best spent at home, where the information I received is familiar and predictable, and where I can make sure to take enough breaks between ‘activities’. And yes, even doing laundry or dishes would count as one of those activities. The amount of activities I can do on a day has slowly gone up, and the amount of rest I need in between them has slowly gone down. Inside of my own house I don’t need that many breaks anymore, but for things outside of my own house it’s still a very different story.

WHAT TO DO?

Luckily I have done plenty of reading on human being’s basic psychological needs, and I realised I needed a ‘goal’ in this seemingly non-progressing situation. Or at least something in my life that was moving forward while I was stuck at home. I wasn’t going to sit and sob, but I was going to focus on what I could do, and I found new challenges to keep myself entertained. I’ve been re-decorating the attic and the balcony of my house, I’ve made some lino stamps. And I’ve finally truly picked up running and developed a stretch/strength-exercising routine. But that doesn't mean I'm not missing a lot of stuff.

I usually like writing, reading, re-writing, and re-reading what I just re-wrote. But it's pretty difficult now. Also cycling outside is an overload of information to process, and therefore absolutely out of the question. In those instances I feel like I can't be myself, and those moments are the hardest. I feel like I can’t do the things that make me ‘me’.

UPSIDES? (NO.)

Now, it isn’t all negative. But I don’t want what I’m about to write next to sound like a: “Yes the worst of it was bad, BUT …” to turn it into something positive. Because it isn’t. This is awful, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. So: the worst of it was bad, AND it also taught me a few things.

As someone who doesn’t process information (neuro)typically, I’ve now been able to feel very clearly what makes situations more challenging from time to time. I’ve learnt that sometimes all I need to do is just turn down the volume of my phone or my TV to feel more calm. It’s the situations that give the most multi-faceted information to process that are the hardest. The worst thing? People, but especially new people.

Now, I know this isn’t the usual topic of my blog, but hey, it’s my blog! So I can write about whatever the hell I want 😁

It’s something I’ve always felt, but it never made as much sense as it does now. The amount of information/sensory stimuli coming from a person, summed up (this list may not be exhaustive):

• Facial expressions;
• The mood they’re in;
• The sound of their voice;
• What they’re wearing;
• Their movements;
• Body language;
• Associative thoughts in your own brain;
• Stuff they might want to talk about;
• And all of the above being relatively unpredictable.

With a new person, there’s an added amount of unknown information that makes them a lot more unpredictable, and therefore also exhausting. Where someone with a neurotypical brain usually gets to choose what sensory stimuli they want to process, a neurodivergent brain doesn’t have a working filter and will try to process it all at once. Hence, I finally understand why meeting new people always feels like such a challenge. It’s nice to have gained some self-understanding here.

This might also seemingly show that the issues stemming from the Long Covid actually are pretty resemblant to the things I struggle with because of my ADHD. It’s indeed similar, though not the same. When I can’t keep track of information and it’s ‘just’ the ADHD, it’s more like things are blurred in my head. With the Long Covid it’s just a hard stop, like something blocks my brain from processing anything. A very strange sensation, as I’m not used to my brain going quiet, like, ever.

SOMETHING POSING AS A CONCLUSION