'I was coming out the other side then it hit me again' - two Sheffield mums describe the nightmare of 'long Covid'

Fran Johnson and Debbie Moon both caught the virus in spring but their health has been ruined by "long Covid" - where symptoms last much longer than the average fortnight and cause serious complications.

It's thought 60,000 people are suffering from long Covid but the symptoms are very varied and doctors are still trying to understand the full implications.

Fran and Debbie are in pain, constantly exhausted and are anxious about their families, their finances and the future.

Both are asthmatic and are desperately worried about catching a further infection as even a cold depletes their energy and health.

Debbie, who owns the shop Moonko on Division Street, initially caught Covid-19 at Easter.

"I was really tired but it wasn't like I'd just had a hard day, I had to sleep all the time. The exhaustion and headaches hit first then I started having trouble breathing.

"I couldn't breathe, I had awful headaches, a burning in my chest and my temperature was going right up and that's when I thought, this isn't normal.

"I was isolating in the front room and my family were leaving food for me outside the door.

"The breathlessness was scary. I tried my inhaler but it started to get increasingly worse and I knew my inhaler wasn't working so I rang 111 and got a prescription for antibiotics and steroids to help me breathe."

Fran, who is a councillor for Stocksbridge and also works for Olivia Blake MP, became ill mid-March

"I started with nausea, headaches, sneezing and a sore throat that was like nothing I had ever had before.

"I was still functioning and felt all right after three days so I did some housework but when I woke up the next day I couldn't get out of bed and felt so weird, I just didn't know what was going on.

"I couldn't get up, it was absolutely exhausting and then my temperature started going up. The headaches got worse and I had difficulty breathing and my skin went a yellow colour.

"I took my inhaler constantly, a couple of times an hour. I couldn't get out of bed for 10 days but the symptoms were so variable."

After 11 weeks, Debbie became very ill. "Paramedics came out because I couldn't breathe again and I had a lot of chest pain. On another occasion, my oxygen was going down and my heart rate was going up to 130 so I was sent to A&E and put on the Covid ward in the Northern General.

"I had lots of tests to check for lung clots and heart issues because of my chest pains."

Six months on, the pair of them still suffer daily.

Debbie says: "There are different symptoms and episodes and it hits you again and again. It's really up and down, there's no warning.

"After working in the shop I can't focus and have headaches and chest pains. I have to physically go into the shop and I also do online orders because if I don't work, we struggle financially.

"Some days I feel absolutely awful but I still need to do school runs. I had a cold and that was enough to exhaust me."

Fran says she can deteriorate in an hour and has been on a phased return to work.

"It's a cycle of relapse and recovery. I did get better and thought I was coming out the other side then it hit me again.

"I was crying to the GP and I started to completely shield because I was too exhausted.

On week 15 I had a really bad relapse and that was almost harder to recover from than the original time.

"I had rashes and Covid toes, where all the skin blisters, and a lot of neurological symptoms with muscle spasms, bad memory loss, poor coordination and barely able to have conversations. It was so bad, I was sent for an MRI scan.

"It's also been really hard on my mental health because I used to work 16 hours a day, then come home and do housework and never sit down.

"I've been forced to live a completely different pace and that's caused me quite a lot of anxiety. People at work have been really understanding and I worry so much about people that don't have good working conditions or are in insecure housing.

"Getting reinfected really worries me because there's so little we know about it."

There is a Facebook group and website for people with long Covid to find support.

Meanwhile, Covid-19 survivor Paul Barber has been discharged from Sheffield’s Royal Hallamshire Hospital after 175 days receiving life-saving care including 72 days on a ventilator.

He thanked the ‘amazing team’ who had looked after him during his six-month stay at the Glossop Road hospital.

Paul said: “I have been given the best care in the world, I couldn’t have asked for more.

"Every single person involved across Sheffield Teaching Hospitals has been absolutely fantastic.

Paul says that he and his family will be ‘forever grateful’ to the doctors and nurses who cared for him – and issued a plea to other people to take the deadly virus seriously after the Prime Minister said a second wave of Covid-19 was underway in the UK.

"After having being so sick, I really want to urge people not to be complacent about this deadly virus, please follow the rules which are there to help limit the chance of it spreading,” Paul said.

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