‘Grief, long Covid, PTSD – my life five years since lockdown’ | UK News

Five years on from watching her mum die in the bed next to her after contracting Covid-19, Anabel Sharma has lost count of how many times she has been re-admitted to hospital.

The 53-year-old is recovering from double pneumonia after spending most of January in hospital – the first of what she expects will be two or three visits to hospital this year.

That has been the case every year since 2020, when she spent three months in intensive care with the virus.

Today, only a foggy memory of that time remains for Mrs Sharma, who as well as being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), is living with long Covid and the multitude of health problems that come with it.

She had to watch a live stream of her mum Maria Rico’s funeral from the intensive care unit at the Leicester Royal Infirmary, after they were both admitted on the same day in October 2020.

Mrs Sharma, from Whitwick in Leicestershire, previously told of her 76-year-old mum’s decision to take off the mask keeping her alive, to share her last moments with her daughters.

“Grieving [my mum], it took a while,” she said. “I think I did manage to grieve eventually. It took a couple of years.”

But what has been more difficult, she said, was looking back at that time.

Her PTSD means there are gaps in Mrs Sharma’s memory of her time in intensive care. And for now, she is apprehensive about trying to revisit it.

She said: “Because I’m still unwell, I don’t want to be mentally struggling as well. Will I have a meltdown? Will I have a breakdown?”

However, she says she is still left with “subconscious triggers”.

The medical business consultant now has to sleep wearing a mask, known as a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine.

It is designed to treat sleep apnoea, a condition that causes a person to stop and start breathing in their sleep, which she developed after having Covid.

Mrs Sharma said: “Some days I just can’t put the mask on because it takes me right back to then [being in hospital].

“Sometimes I wake up in the middle of a night terror and I just have to rip it off.

“Even when I was first fit with the mask, I had to spray perfume in it to be able to put it on in the first place because it smelled like intensive care.”

However, she said her PTSD was “manageable” at the moment, more so than her physical health.

Mrs Sharma relied on portable oxygen for about 18 months after being discharged from hospital in 2020.

The damage Covid caused to her lungs has left her immunosuppressed and susceptible to infections, particularly respiratory infections.

Her hospital visits often last weeks at a time.

In January, she was admitted to hospital for two weeks with double pneumonia. A week after being discharged, she had to return due to blood results so poor that she was told she was at risk of sepsis.

“This last time, I had some sort of episode that required me to be resuscitated and my youngest [son] saw that – and my husband was there,” she said.

She recalled her 14-year-old son asking if she was going to die.

“Whenever I get ill [my children] get super anxious and a child shouldn’t have to feel that.

“Are you going to die? Are you going to get better this time? They’re questions a child shouldn’t need to ask,” she said.

She added the doctors had been surprised at how many doses of intravenous antibiotics she had needed and for how long, and she was still undergoing tests to determine the cause of the pneumonia.

Mrs Sharma also has liver problems and a faulty valve in her heart, which she said was being monitored by an implanted device.

“Other than mild asthma, I didn’t have anything before Covid,” she said.

The keen kickboxer was used to training several hours a week but said she had not been able to at all in the past year.

She said: “When I think about how I used to be able to exercise I wonder ‘am I ever going to get anywhere near that again?’

“I’ll keep trying, I’m not going to give up, but I can see why people [who are diagnosed with long Covid] get very down. It does feel like a disability.”

Her poor health has also affected her family and social life.

“My youngest has said ‘I just want a normal Christmas’ because last year I was in hospital for the whole of Christmas pretty much,” she said.

Then, she says, there is the “tension” of preparing for upcoming events in the diary, with her family taking steps to ensure she is protected from any risk of illness.

“Because we’ve been doing it for so long, it’s my new normal – it is for my whole family as well,” she said.

Mrs Sharma said she had learned to take hospital admissions in her stride.

“It’s like, ‘here we go again’,” she said.

She likened herself to a “well-seasoned traveller” who laid their clothes out on their hotel beds.

“That’s me now. Last time I went in – I know it gets hot so I don’t take my pyjamas, I ask for hospital pyjamas,” she said.

“I told them I don’t need to see the menu – because I know it back to front.

“I got there, I set up my charger, I had my laptop and my little suitcase. I could see the other patients looking at me,” she said.

But she said “disjointed care” was leading to longer stays in hospital and added to her “frustration” at the wider healthcare system.

She said: “Initially all the departments were working to together. It was like a one-stop-shop. Now my care is disjointed again. The long Covid clinics used to be important.

“[The care] was just so much better when it was important. But now it seems like it’s just forgotten.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Long Covid can have a debilitating impact on people’s physical and mental health and we are committed to ensuring there are quality services for people suffering with it in every part of the country.

“No single treatment currently exists for long Covid, which is why we have funded research into the condition.”

Despite the ongoing struggle with her health, Mrs Sharma said she refused to feel sorry for herself.

“I do feel a bit silly wearing a mask now when I have to wear one,” she said.

“But I try to be positive and I am strong – I’m grateful that I survived.”

• If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this story, support is available via the Action Line.