Last January, author and journalist Tracey Spicer caught COVID. Her recovery was slow – and then in February, her symptoms came back with a vengeance.
For months, she endured a “living death” with long COVID, dragging her “corpse-like body” around the house. She had a tiredness that sleep could not ease and a pain in her chest that often felt like a looming heart attack. She was in and out of a wheelchair.
On Tuesday, when I called Spicer, the excitement in her voice was palpable. “I’m genuinely feeling 80 per cent better,” she told me.
Tracey Spicer, seen here in a photo from 2018.Credit:Janie Barrett
She can hold long conversations on the phone again. Her blood tests, for so long in the red, are back in the black.
So much of what I’ve written about long COVID in the past has been dark: lack of funding, lack of treatment.
Spicer’s story is one of hope. And it has important things to tell us about the course of this disease and how to approach treating it.
“There is a light at the end of the tunnel,” she says. “It does not necessarily mean you’ll feel like this for life. Because honestly, it feels like a living death – and to know you’re not going to feel like this forever is priceless.”
Spicer’s recovery hasn’t been linear. “More like a squiggle,” she says.
It took her at least six months to find a treatment approach that worked for her. Even then, it wasn’t until September that she started to feel a little better.
Tracey Spicer’s slow road to recovery from the ‘living death’ of long COVID
Last January, author and journalist Tracey Spicer caught COVID. Her recovery was slow – and then in February, her symptoms came back with a vengeance.
For months, she endured a “living death” with long COVID, dragging her “corpse-like body” around the house. She had a tiredness that sleep could not ease and a pain in her chest that often felt like a looming heart........
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