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FEATURE
RAILSTAFF MAY/JUNE 2020
SURVIVING CO COVID-19 IS AN AWFUL DISEASE THAT HAS KILLED A LOT OF PEOPLE. BUT WHAT IS IT LIKE TO ACTUALLY SUFFER IT, AND SURVIVE?
K
irsten Whitehouse has worked with RailStaff for several years, as exhibition manager for Railtex and Infrarail with RailStaff as a media partner. Then, shortly after setting up her own company, she went down with COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. This is her story.
On Saturday 28 March, in the space of less than 30 minutes, I went from teaching a bootcamp session to lying on my sofa unable to move, gasping for air with my chest and airways burning like the sun and dry as the desert. This is my personal account of overcoming Covid-19. It doesn’t make for pleasant reading - but Corona is not a pleasant virus. The article is not meant to frighten you but, make no mistake, I AM trying to make you realise just how serious this virus is. Some of you may know me from my previous role as exhibition manager for Railtex and Infrarail, two of the UK’s leading rail shows. I left that position in early 2019 to set up my own company, Green Tiger Events, counting organisations like the fabulous Railway Industry Association amongst my clients. I also studied on the side, qualifying as a fitness instructor in late 2019. It is important for you to know this - I will explain why later.
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FIRST SIGNS - FEELING A BIT RUBBISH My Covid story starts on 24 March, just a few days after my 45th birthday, when I started experiencing very subtle symptoms: an occasional cough, a dreadful headache and a pain in my chest and stomach that made me think I had indigestion (I never get indigestion!). If I had a temperature it was low enough for me to not notice. My voice went strangely hoarse and coffee started tasting ‘wrong’. For days, I dismissed my feeling a bit rubbish as a seasonal cold. It may well have been. I continued teaching my online bootcamp throughout those early days without too much of a problem, until after that one Saturday morning class when everything suddenly changed: a leaden tiredness descended on me and wouldn’t lift for weeks. My airways and deep into my chest felt as if they were on fire. No amount of water seemed to even touch the bone-dry sides of my mouth and throat. It was this extreme sensation - one of the weirdest feelings I have ever experienced - which finally made me research Corona symptoms properly: I found a timeline of common symptoms and was horrified to realise that - with the exception of the fever - I was ticking them off, one by one. I spent the next two days in bed but still in doubt: it seemed unlikely that I would be one of the first to pick this up. As a healthy fitness and nutrition teacher I didn’t think I was a likely candidate. Despite my cough progressively getting much worse, my chest feeling tighter and heavier and my breathing becoming more laboured, I commented to friends that I’d had colds worse than this in the past. I spoke too soon. By day three, the cough had eased some, but the burning in my chest steadily worsened whilst my breathing became ever more restricted. The most
