Speaker: Peter Barlow
What has long COVID taken from you?
Peter Barlow: Hi, coming on here and saying, oh, I've got Long COVID seems, uh, I suppose a bit of a, a fraud. Um, I think I, I do have long COVID but I know that there are many people out there who have been much worse effective than me. But I think it's important, uh, that long COVID is recognized, not just to be the people who've got long bad, enduring, um, conditions, uh, like, um, me, uh, but it also affects people in other ways. I took out retirement just before COVID hit. Uh, so I had to change my plans and I ended up, uh, based on my, uh, nursing background, getting a job with NHS Scotland as a contact tracer and then later as well. Um, this is all working from home, uh, setting up, uh, appointments for vaccinations, um, through their helpline. Um, so I'm fairly well educated about the pandemic and the spread of COVID and the effects of vaccinations and so on. Um, and then, uh, this is uh 2024 in January, 2023. So that's about a year ago I caught COVID. It came to me from school from, uh, family members school where they work. So you don't have an option of avoiding that school. Uh, or would Lisbon lose money, uh, lose a means of support? Um, that was January and, um, in either late February, early March, um, I was in hospital for another reason and they said, oh, your blood pressure is awful high. And I said, well, I'm in hospital, I'm nervous but it was worse than that. Um, and I have developed high blood pressure. Now, I said before, I used to be a nurse and I have a swig at home. I use it from time to time to check on my blood pressure and my blood pressure has always been for my age pretty, pretty reasonable. Um, until just after I had COVID then, oh, now I'm on 5 mg of Rama a day and then a few weeks ago, it struck me a minute. COVID is a vascular disease, although it's, um, spread through, um, lungs, blood pressure is a vascular thing maybe. Yeah, that makes sense. A sudden onset of high blood pressure just following COVID. It seems to me, hey, Peter, you've got Long COVID. COVID has given you high blood pressure. Now in a way that's may be good news because I know that some aspects of Long COVID do eventually improve with time. So fingers crossed, um, maybe my high blood pressure will at ease with time. Um And also obviously I'm working on uh lifestyle changes as well to try and reduce my stress and, and uh keep the blood pressure low. So that's where I'm at. It's not a horror story, but it's just yet another story of damage, almost definitely done by COVID. It's time we stopped COVID. It's time we reintroduce mitigations, not limit our lives. Um, fresh air filters, ventilation, wearing masks in public places, all things that we can do every day without affecting anything that we do. We should do it. We should start now, stay healthy if you can get better if you can't. Bye bye.
