Brain fog? Headaches? Fatigue?
Perimenopause or long Covid? You decide
Me this week after trying to find an image to illustrate brain fog...
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And just like that… long Covid is making its presence felt. Again.
Regular readers will know I have history (Abre numa nova janela) when it comes to ignoring the messages my body tries to send me. No matter how loud it’s yelling, I have a startling capacity to put my hands over my ears, lalala I’m not listening. Wilfully ignoring the blindingly obvious is quite likely the only superpower I have.
It’s a superpower that wasn’t initially capable of withstanding the might of Covid. Almost exactly a year ago I was struck down by Covid (and I do mean struck) after nine days and 15 events at Cheltenham Literature Festival. For nine days, I burnt the candle both ends. If I wasn’t working I was socialising. I ate crap. I drank too much. I didn’t wear a mask (except travelling there and back). I hugged my friends. By the end I was knackered, stressed and probably suffering from malnutrition. In short, I brought it entirely on myself. I’d had two jabs after all. What was there to worry about?
Covid felled me. You have never seen a blue line materialise so fast and so dark. (Well, I hadn't.) I spent the best part of the next two weeks in bed. For three months, leaving the house was a day's work and actual paid employment was a fantasy. Unpacking the Sainsburys delivery laid me out for hours afterwards. When I forced myself back to the screen in January – adamant that I had had enough of this rubbish and it was not going on a moment longer (can you say messiah complex?!) – a couple of hours on a computer gave me blinding headaches that lasted for days. If I paced myself, I could maybe get through three days work in seven.
To cut a long and extremely dull story short, this went on for eight months. And then I discovered vitamin B12 jabs.
To backtrack slightly: early on in my Covid experience, a mutual friend put me in touch with fellow long Covid sufferer, novelist Kate Weinberg. I say 'fellow', but Kate’s experience was far worse than mine. If you’re interested she’s written about it (Abre numa nova janela) much more eloquently than I could. Like Kate, there were days when walking to the kitchen was a stretch; days I wondered whether I would ever be my old self again. In the year she’d been laid low, Kate had tried almost everything and had finally found a cocktail of solutions that worked for her. I began working my way through them – well, the ones I could afford – in search of something that would restore me to a semblance of the person I had previously been.
(And before you ask, yes, I’d been to the GP and had all the tests, been advised to work less (if I was able), walk more (if I was able) and take migraine tablets for the endless headaches (if I wanted to. On top of the HRT and the anti-mads? No ta.)
Anyway, anyway... One day as I was idly Googling “what the hell can I do about long Covid, is this really my life now?” I came across an article on vitamin B12 deficiency. It chimed with something Kate had told me about B-vitamins and long Covid. (I forget which ones.) I called my friendly GP (I say called... I rang 93 times on the dot of 8.30am, all the appointments were gone by the time I got through, but they kindly arranged for someone to call me back later that day) who said they would have tested for B12 deficiency when I first reported my long Covid symptoms. She looked at my file. Oh. They hadn’t. For some reason they’d missed that one off. Human error. 🤷🏼♀️ I could go back and get more blood tests and if I was deficient they’d put me on the waiting list for injections on the NHS. Reader, I couldn’t be arsed. I’d already Googled it. (Who needs a doctor when you've got Google? I know...) One jab cost £25 at the time, and I was easily spending that much on coffee. There were several pharmacies within a couple of mile radius that could administer on the spot. So, that’s what I did.
No exaggeration, within hours of having my first B12 injection I felt like a different person. I couldn't have run a marathon but I could definitely walk up a gentle hill without wheezing. And that wasn't nothing for someone, previously a big walker, who'd recently struggled to walk to the end of the road. For the first time in months, I felt like someone I recognised. I felt like myself. It was a miracle! Since then I’ve had a B12 jab every month. I’m currently trying to wean myself down to one every two months, but that’s not happening this month, I can tell you that now.
I don’t think it’s a placebo, but it could be, I suppose. All I know is I have a jab and I get a surge of energy. By the end of the month, the lethargy returns. And repeat.
Except this month. This month I have been a long Covid-denying idiot. Complacency kicked in. I allowed myself to return to my old bad habits of thinking I’m superhuman and the world will stop if I get off. IKR? I’ve had maybe two days off since September, done a nine-day, nine-event stint at Cheltenham and while I was there nipped to Birmingham to record two episodes of The Shift podcast live (coming very soon), then I returned to Edinburgh for five minutes before promptly heading to Sheffield to interview the brilliantly funny Guardian columnist Marina Hyde in front of a packed house. I went to bed on Monday night on a massive high and woke up Tuesday morning... not. The train journey back took five hours instead of three and a half and I walked through the door and promptly collapsed. As my Nan would have wasted no time in telling me, I have no one to blame but myself. And long Covid. But having long Covid and carrying on regardless is a bit like leaving the EU and then being surprised you can’t use the EU members passport queue at immigration…
Anyway this is a very convoluted way of saying that when I actually sit back and think about it – as I am being forced to do right now – all of this feels extremely familiar. Because it’s exactly how I felt when I was struggling with perimenopause symptoms almost ten years ago. Minus the rage, plus bone deep exhaustion.
• Brain fog – check
• Fatigue – check
• Who even am I any more? – check
• Sweats – check
• Zero stamina – check
• Breathlessness – check
• Joint and muscle pains – check
Sound familiar?
And it made me wonder: how many people with long Covid are actually perimenopausal and how many who think they’re perimenopausal may actually have long Covid? Or both?
This is not news, of course. The medical community has been talking about the fact that long Covid disproportionately impacts women aged approx 40-60 (Abre numa nova janela) (if not actually doing anything about it) for at least a year. And while I don’t always agree with everything Dr Louise Newson says, she has an excellent fact sheet on this very subject (Abre numa nova janela).
All of this is to say three things:
Long Covid is back, for me. Briefly, I hope. But right now I am all out of spoons. Even little ones. Hopefully a couple of weeks with no obligation to leave the house will sort that out. That and my next B12 jab.
On the subject of B12 jabs. If you were in any doubt, they have changed my post-Covid life. Nobody is paying me to say this, I promise! They genuinely made the difference between functioning and not functioning, for me. And, as B12 is water soluble, like vitamin C, if you aren't deficient and don't actually need it, you'll just pee it out, so the only harm you're doing by dropping £25 on a jab is to your bank balance. (But I do want to caveat this by saying I'm not a doctor, this is just my personal experience. At the very least, consult a pharmacist.)
And lastly, if these symptoms sound at all familiar please do consult your GP – whether or not you've had Covid. Or even especially if you don’t think you’ve had Covid. I’ll never tire of saying this, but it's time! Time women suffering the mental (and physical, of course) symptoms of menopause stopped suffering in silence.
• Does any of this sound familiar? Let's talk about it.
BEFORE YOU GO...
There are still a couple of places left on Midlife Shift With Ease, the new year weekend retreat with a difference I’m hosting with Ease Retreats in January. Christmas is a coming after all, it’s time to start dropping those hints! If you fancy joining us, contact hello@easeretreats.com for more info.
