Me in March 2020, about two weeks before hell broke loose. Photo taken by Cara-Lee Gevers.

One year ago almost to the hour, I went for a jog ahead of the strict lockdown that was about to begin in South Africa. As I trotted along, I became aware of a sensation that would become all too familiar in the weeks and months to come — that of an invisible strap tightening around my chest. I remember thinking “Funny, I don’t usually get exercise-induced asthma.”

I've written about what followed in an essay included in The Lockdown Collection and on social media. I had contracted what, with hindsight, was judged to be fairly severe Covid-19 pneumonia at a time when there were no narratives, no understanding, little shared knowledge about the disease — and in which no standard response to serious illness applied any longer. No, I could not go see a doctor — it was months before I could drive a car again. For the same reason, I couldn’t get tested (in those early months, public health services flatly refused to test me on the basis that I lived alone and therefore didn’t pose an infection threat — so much for all the chatter about test and trace). The night I needed an ambulance was also the night I could no longer decipher the hieroglyphics on either my cellphone or my landline. This was just the beginning.

I ran a fever for six or seven weeks: the acute stage of the illness, during which my GP tried anxiously to manage me from a distance. Nebulising with powerful steroids quite possibly saved my life. Maybe it was the vibrations from Boychik, my rescue tripod, who purred like a tractor alongside me all through the worst nights. Meanwhile, clients and authors, still sold on the Before narrative, where even severe illness was something done and dusted within a matter of weeks, repeatedly asked when I would be able to pick up the projects I had abandoned. I struggled on with some for a few weeks — with hindsight, I have no idea how I managed this. My overriding emotion was not fear: it was bewilderment. When was I going to be well again? I had taken six weeks to recover from a radical hysterectomy that involved major abdominal surgery and repair, and they had felt like six months. How was it that I couldn’t get over whatever it was that ailed me?

I never got tested: by the time I lost my sense of smell and taste, Covid was a foregone conclusion. The infectious diseases specialist I saw nearly five months down the line made the official diagnosis: post-acute or long-haul Covid.

One year later, and I’m still suffering the effects of long Covid. There are days I feel nearly normal — rare but treasured — and days, in the words of a fellow sufferer, when I feel as if I’ve been hit by a freight train. (To see her, and me, interviewed for Carte Blanche, click here.)

As the pandemic swallowed the launch of my first novel (and the accompanying UK book tour), and as I watched my income dwindle, forced to abandon prized projects and cancel writing commitments, it was hard not to feel self-pity. I had no idea much, much worse was to come. Covid was not done with my family.

Early in December, my sister contracted the beta strain of the virus, just as the second wave got underway in South Africa. Within days, she was in ICU. Within a week, she was on a ventilator. She remained on it (and in a coma) for almost a month. Then came the slooooooow process of weaning her off it (it was by no means a foregone conclusion that this would even be possible) as she fought off one deadly HAI after another. A video clip of her emergence from the Underworld (65 days in ICU, a record for the hospital), with all the staff cheering her on, went viral.

I had been doing fairly well up until she got ill. I had gotten past the breathless stage, the sense of a drill bit in my chest, the constant shivering, icy extremities, the crushing weakness and fatigue, and into what I think of as the third tier of LoCo symptoms: a steady cycle of rashes and blisters, itching (I’d wake myself scratching until I drew blood), the trots, extreme pain at old injury sites (every broken bone and surgical scar rose zombie-like from the grave of my body), and blurred/double vision. But my sense of taste and smell were improving; I could taste coriander and orange again, after eight very boring months of tasting only salt, sugar, chilli and ginger (and smelling nothing — helpful when my lady cat Lily piddled on the seat of my car). My specialist had told me in August 2020 that he thought it would take me about a year to make a full recovery. “March 2021,” I told myself. “Just hold on till then.” I did my breathing exercises and Pilates on my bed, made my own kombucha and ginger brew, ate raw sprouts and swallowed handfuls of Vitamin C. I was making progress. I practiced patience and hoped.

Well. It will come as a surprise to no one to learn that stress makes long Covid worse. That acute stress makes it much worse. That acute prolonged stress (SIXTY-FIVE DAYS worth) makes it much, MUCH worse.

So I’m back to where I was about six months ago. I can drive a car, but it exhausts me, and I creep around the backroads. I can work for a few hours most days, but I never know when a “flat battery” day will occur. These start with me trying to pep-talk just one foot onto the floor and end with me still in bed at 5pm. I ignore the attacks of breathlessness, ascribing them to the panic attacks my body started downloading once my sister was out of danger. (Falling apart before then was not an option.) The itching has been so bad my skin is scarred with scratch-marks. An ophthalmologist has pronounced my tear reservoirs to be permanently damaged. Okay, eye-drops and gels forever, but not the end of the world. Until I discovered that the first month’s supply (I have to use them for the rest of my life) cost R450. (That’s another thing about long Covid: it’s a bloody expensive condition because other possible reasons for symptoms keep having to be excluded, hence lots of tests.)

Why write about this? I use this blog mostly to share tips and ideas on how to be a greener citizen, and how to cope with life’s roadblocks (although when I started, I had things like loadshedding in mind, not a global pandemic that would change everything, most probably forever).

The truth is that the experience of Long Covid is unbelievably lonely. Yet there were first dozens, then hundreds, and now thousands of us, hundreds of thousands worldwide. The second wave will swell our numbers. We’re all still feeling our way. Those who got it early feel especially misunderstood, unheard, brushed aside. Sufferers find the denialism of covidiots particularly insufferable, as we wonder if we will ever get our lives and health back. But there are practical tips; online groups; management techniques, and it’s worth sharing these, and I have good intentions about doing so.

One thing is far more terrible than long Covid, and that’s having someone you love in Covid ICU. Trial by terror and daily two-minute phone call from the hospital: the worst trauma my family has suffered by far. And nothing — NOTHING — can prepare one for this. I did learn, the hard way, what did and didn’t help. My two top rules:
1) DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT PHONE IMMEDIATE FAMILY MEMBERS, or message them asking for news, explanations, reports. Do not communicate in ANY way that requires them to be responsive or to perform the emotional labour of reassuring you. Call a close family friend or more distant relative for information instead. If you have to phone the family, do so only during “business” hours. A phone ringing late at night or early in the morning makes the heart stagger with horror. (It seems extraordinary that this needs spelling out, but one person woke me at 7 on a Sunday morning to ask how my sister was.)

2) Send food.

This is a very short list when I could write a book (and probably will) on the correct etiquette (aka plain commonsense) for life-and-death scenarios — which we will all eventually face. I will keep you posted. In the meantime, this is how I look after the past year. Nothing about any of this is pretty. But being alive, no matter how battered and creaky, is preferable to the alternative, a truth I’ve had my nose well and truly rubbed in.

Pic (taken in the eastern Free State) provided entirely for purposes of morale-boosting.

I’ve just watched the President’s speech in response to the corona virus pandemic, announcing lockdown until 16 April, and am both tearful and proud. I have an inkling of how my grandparents might have felt in 1939, listening to the announcement of war on the radio. You’ll all have watched too, so let me get to the point.

I’ve been wanting to write about the COVID-19 pandemic, mostly thoughts and tips (which I am hoping YOU will supply) on practical ways of building stronger social networks at the same time as we’re required to keep each other at (more than) arms’ length. This will be the basis of my next book, and I find I’ve been mulling almost too furiously to write, especially as we all know so little. I am not a medical doctor, and although I’m reading medical journal articles as fast as I can, I am still stumped by questions like: is it safe for me to make food for others, if it’s something the other party has to boil before eating?

BUT the reason I’m writing this in haste is because I’m worried that in the two and a half days before lockdown starts on Thursday, we might all turn into headless chickens. Forgive my presumption, but may I make some very, very strong practical suggestions.

1) Please DON’T charge into the supermarkets tomorrow brandishing your credit cards and clear the shelves of every possible supply. It’s lockdown for three weeks, not three years. You do NOT need any more toilet paper, and this is not the moment to hoard. THINK OF OTHERS, especially frontline workers and the vulnerable before you snatch up the last six loaves of bread to stick in your huge freezer.

2) Will supermarkets and pharmacies please (and I know you have very little time to prepare) create dedicated tills for the elderly and those with disabilities. Consider asking your security guards (I know your staff are already overwhelmed) to ask everyone coming in if they need special assistance. Lead them to a shelf of basic commodities reserved for the vulnerable (you can put it behind those no-booze grills). Make similar provision for health-care workers and others supplying essential services. LIMIT NUMBERS of items per person, or make discreet enquiries — is someone filling their trolley for four sets of grandparents or a community food drive, or are they just being selfish? Store managers should circulate, keeping a beady eye on the situation.

3) When you hit the shops, observe social distance, for the love of all the gods. On your way out, tip the car guards and trolley pushers as handsomely as you can manage: their only source of income is about to evaporate.

4) If you have the means, switch to online ordering. Yes, it’s all a bit of a muddle right now, and there are delays, but you will get your balsamic vinegar in the end.

5) If you’re rich, for heaven’s sake don’t clear out the baked beans and tinned pilchards and dried lentils. Go buy jasmine rice and quinoa and tinned artichokes instead. Leave essential cheap protein staples for those who really need them. (I promise to write a blog soon on how to cook with the weird and wonderful things at the back of your larder. It will be fun. No, really. Also *breaks out the Blitz pinny* on how to RATION.)

6) Middle-class employers with domestic workers, nannies, gardeners, etc: when you give your staff their wages for a month’s paid leave (which please please PLEASE do if at all humanly possible), give them a food parcel as well. Tinned tuna and all those baked beans I just told you not to buy. As big a sack of maizemeal as they can carry and store (or drop it off for them). A bag of dried samp and beans. A bottle of sunflower oil, some onions and potatoes. Basic hygiene supplies as well, especially a spray bottle if they don’t have running water in their homes. Actually, scratch all that, ASK them what they need: they might have storage and other challenges. They know more about how to keep their homes clean and hygienic under trying conditions than you’ve ever forgotten, so do not patronise — communicate, rather.

7) If you are going shopping, find out if there are vulnerable people near you, especially the immune-suppressed or compromised — someone who’s in the middle of chemo or similar — or those without transport, and add their items to your grocery lists. If you do spot people filling their trolleys with a lot of items, assume the best: they may be shopping for an entire old-age home (a friend who filled her trolley with goods for needy families in Masi this weekend kept getting the stink-eye — no good deed goes unpunished). Ask a manager to have a quiet word if you think someone is taking more than their fair share.

8) Now is absolutely the time to support your small local business, deli or neighbourhood market. They will be scrambling to respond — as the folk at Fish Hoek’s Neighbourhood Farms store told me, “we can’t stop the food growing.” Many of these will have to start delivering; make enquiries and set up eft platforms for paying them. If the supply chain is interrupted and their veg starts to droop or their bread loses its crunch, offer to pay them to drop it off at soup kitchens and similar NPOs. (Something missing from Cyril’s speech was the tricky business of food banks, which I reckon we are going to need urgently, although HOW to manage them with our levels of poverty AND the need for social distance, is a headache for another day.)

Enough for now. Here’s another picture of something beautiful — my parents’ smallholding in happier times. (This time, a cat did sneak in.) The idea is to remind ourselves that this is a beautiful country, with (mostly) splendid people. Good luck everyone, and expect lots of “for-the-duration” posts.