Tracey Spicer's bedridden plea
Media personality Tracey Spicer has shared an insight into life with long Covid, saying the condition has left her feeling like “a shadow of her former self”.
Ms Spicer, best known as a journalist, newsreader and #MeToo campaigner, caught COVID-19 while holidaying on the Gold Coast and was diagnosed in January.
After being bedridden for two weeks as she recovered from symptoms including a severe cough, she told nine.com.au that she’s still so sick that she struggles to work.
“I’ve felt like a shadow of my former self. I’ve been swimming through mud every day,” she said.
“Even cooking a meal can be absolutely crushing. I can hardly walk around the block.
“I’ve had the debilitating exhaustion, and I also had a very worrying four weeks where I was in and out of hospital with chest pain, I thought I was having a heart attack.”
The Sydneysider is triple vaccinated and, having received differing advice on how to look after herself, has called on Australia to improve its response to long Covid and how it helps patients like her.
One GP told Ms Spicer to push through her fatigue, which a long Covid expert at St Vincent’s Hospital later advised against.
“He said, ‘I’ve had so many people like you come in - you must stop exercising altogether immediately’,” she recalled.
Previously, Ms Spicer would exercise for two hours a day and had been training to undertake a 30-kilometre walk.
Since battling it out with the virus, Ms Spicer has been diagnosed with mild pericarditis, a swelling of tissue around the heart, which has been reported in patients who have recovered from COVID-19.
Although new long Covid clinics have started in Sydney and other areas, Ms Spicer is calling on the government to accelerate their efforts to care for the tens or hundreds of thousands who may be affected by this condition.
“Australia is so far behind the rest of the world in its understanding of it - America has labelled it as a disability,” she said.
"We need a government-led public information campaign to inform health care workers and doctors as well as the public about the symptoms, and what they should be doing about it.
"Otherwise we're going to end up with this wave of disability like what they've seen in other countries, and the society and the workplace are just not ready for it."
Ms Spicer is one of a growing number of ‘long haulers’ sharing their experiences, including several people who spoke to the BBC after having long Covid for two years and Australian journalist Felicity Nelson, who described long Covid as living “life on a timer”.
Image: @traceyspicer (Instagram)