Published: Just now
20-year-old Carl is one of many affected by post-covid.
For him, nothing is the same after corona.
– I can walk a maximum of 500 meters before I have difficulty breathing.
Carl was just about to graduate when he contracted corona in the spring of 2021. After a while it was established that he had suffered from post-covid.
Then he could barely walk around the house without being dead tired.
– I can get 120-130 in pulse just by standing up, Carl told Aftonbladet in October 2021.
When Aftonbladet reaches him again in December 2022, he is still ill, and his condition has not improved much since last time.
– I am still on full-time sick leave. I spend the majority of the days at home. If I go out for a walk or meet friends, the pulse jumps right away. I can walk a maximum of 500 meters before I have trouble breathing. It’s the same when I’m cooking.
“Becomes a setback immediately”
After five months of waiting, Carl was finally able to come to a post-covid clinic, where he now does rehabilitation training two days a week.
– The doctors noted that my breathing pattern was very special. That I was breathing in a very abnormal way. But no one could explain why it was like that, or why my lungs hurt. I feel that the care I receive at the rehabilitation clinic is very good, but I don’t really know if I have improved that much compared to before I started there.
In addition to breathing difficulties, Carl also experiences fatigue, malaise and headaches.
– There are setbacks as soon as I exert myself, and very little effort makes me very tired. Much of the training I do is therefore sedentary so that I don’t get my heart rate too high.
Pain in the lungs
How would you describe your life now, compared to how it was before you got sick?
– I am constantly reminded of how it was before this. It’s something I think about almost every day. At the same time, I am still myself. I can still see friends every week and have dinner in town, but the difference now is that when they move on to the next place, I go home and rest instead. This weekend we saw each other and watched football, for example. Then I had to go home after two hours because my lungs hurt.
At the same time, Carl describes how he felt during the spring that he became more energetic.
– It happened as it got warmer. Then suddenly I could do a lot more social things without having to rest immediately afterwards. It was a small improvement at least, and people around me thought I seemed more alert. But since the autumn, I have become more tired, had more pain in my lungs again and have caught colds more times. It really feels like I catch colds much more easily now than before.
“Am hopeful”
– But all in all, I feel that I have a little more energy now than before. But there are very small margins so I hope it will become clearer in the future.
How do you keep your spirits up?
– I live life day by day. Now it’s been so long that I’ve gotten used to what my everyday life looks like. I don’t lie down and be sad about it anymore. At the beginning I felt that I missed a lot of things, like my student for example. But now I take the day as it comes instead, week by week. I’m going to my rehab and seeing friends, and hopefully I’ll be able to start working again and not just need to rest.
– All with the hope that research will progress and that within a few years a treatment will be found for those of us who have been affected. I am hopeful that it will succeed. And in the meantime, I focus on rehabilitation and having fun with my friends. Because I can’t imagine it being like this for the rest of my life. I do not think so.
When asked how he experienced post-covid care, Carl says that based on both his own experience, but also what he has read and heard about, he is quite disappointed.
– For my own part, I feel very privileged and grateful to have received such good help. But my view is that post-covid care in particular is very unequal depending on where in the country you live. That some regions have special post-covid clinics, while others are referred to their health center and that it may therefore take some time before they receive the diagnosis.
He takes a serious look at the fact that the number of covid cases is now increasing.
– This is still a serious illness and there is a significant risk of suffering from the problems I have. I also worry about myself. That my symptoms will get worse if I get sick again, and that my recovery may thus be delayed.
– At the same time, I think that the government and the authorities talk far too little about precisely post-covid and the risks associated with it. That we who are affected end up in the shadows. But it is a real disease and you should therefore take both it and us who are affected seriously.