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Long covid and fatigue

A crash after my second step up

Started 13 April 2025 · 22 replies · 256 hearts · read 3.6k times

SamPortland, OR · 13 April 2025
1.3 years ago

A crash after my second step up Writing it down partly to work out what I actually think.

Squeamish subject, so I am going to be plain about it and get it over with.

What I would find most useful is not advice. It is somebody describing what their version of this was, and how long it went on for.

I have read the guides here, which were more useful than anything else I have found, and I still have a question they do not cover.

Sorry for the length. If anyone has been here, I would very much like to hear it.

85

NkosiJohannesburg, ZA
#1

Yes. All of this. I had the same in my third month and I remember thinking there was something specifically wrong with me, which there was not.

6

BunnyWeston-super-Mare, UK
#2

Mine lasted about seven weeks and then lifted over a few days. I cannot tell you why. I can tell you it lifted.

8

NazneenDhaka, BD
#3

Similar here, and mine turned out to be a completely unrelated deficiency picked up on bloods.

15

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK
#4

Building on what the reply above wrote rather than answering the original question.

Before anyone offers a remedy: what has been described here is on the list of things that need a clinician today rather than a thread. I am going to be firm about that, kindly.

19me too 9

QuinGuildford, UK
#5

Please do not read the comments under news articles about this. I lost a fortnight to that.

12

CloverTotnes, UK
#6

Reading the reply above, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

I asked my nurse the same question and she said something I have repeated ever since: that the aim is to keep you on treatment, not to get you up the schedule.

7

HuwWrexham, UK
#7

My experience was very boring, which I offer as data. Some of us just get a dull time of it.

10

BibiRabat, MA
#8

What helped was lowering my own expectations of the week rather than trying to hold the week together.

11

NorahDerry, NI
#9

Can I gently push back on one thing? Not the substance, just the framing — you have written twice that you should be coping better. Who told you that?

11

OndineLausanne, CH
#10

Reading the reply above, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

My pharmacist was more use than anyone. Ten minutes at the counter, no appointment, no charge.

13me too 6

TabbyMargate, UK
#11

What the reply above described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

For what it is worth, the trial data on this is thinner than the confidence of the internet would suggest. Worth knowing when you read the posts.

8

MorayElgin, UK
#12

It got worse before it got better for me, which I wish someone had said. About ten days of worse.

12

TommieEly, UK
#13

The thing that changed it for me was going slower, agreed with my prescriber. I am not suggesting you do that. I am saying the conversation exists.

10

OllyReading, UK
#14

Have you got anyone who can be with you when you do it? It made an enormous difference to me and I felt silly asking.

10me too 4

PeronelCanterbury, UK
#15

I am about four months behind you and I have been dreading exactly this, so thank you for writing it down before I got there.

14me too 9

RillaAberdeen, UK
#16

Gently disagreeing with the reply above, or rather adding the other half of it.

Yes to the burping. It is real, it is unbeautiful, and it does settle.

12

PersisBristol, UK
#17

Building on what the reply above wrote rather than answering the original question.

I did exactly the same and felt terrible about it. You have not done anything wrong.

16

WellsChester, UK
#18

Practical, boring answer: write the three questions down before you go in. I have never once remembered them otherwise.

9

HalCambridge, UK
#19

I have been in this circle a year and this question comes round every few months. It is not a silly question. It is the question.

8

KeeleyBlackpool, UK
#20

Two things that helped me, neither of them clever: small amounts more often, and drinking a lot more than felt necessary.

11me too 5

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK
#21

Thank you for writing this. I am not going to add information to it. I am going to say that what you have described is very common and very rarely said out loud.

24

MapleToronto, CA
#22

Coming back to this a fortnight later to say it settled. Leaving the update because I hate reading threads that stop.

10