My concentration vanished on the par-3 7th tee. Biting my tongue at my playing partner’s naive statement that “Covid wasn’t that bad”, I pulled my shot left. I cursed under my breath at both my wayward shot and their comment, because Covid had destroyed my life.
About to unleash my frustration on a low-percentage flop shot, I stopped. I walked away and took a deep breath. There was no need to take it out on the ball. Yes, Covid had destroyed my life, but it was golf that had helped rebuild it.
In January 2020, I was happy. I had a boyfriend and a marketing career and I regularly played tennis and badminton. Life was really good.
Within 12 hours, I went from packing for my best friend’s stag do in Vegas to lying in a hospital bed. I had a searing temperature, breathing difficulty and exhaustion to the point I couldn’t stand. It was so early in the pandemic that doctors didn’t even realise I had Covid at first. For a while, things didn’t look good. Fortunately, however, I eventually got to leave the hospital and go home to recover.
As many find, the onset of long Covid is delayed and gradual. The illness not being a ‘thing’ yet, my symptoms were initially dismissed as “overdoing it”. A 24/7 headache, difficulty breathing and shortterm memory loss
