“Overnight, I found myself in a 90-year-old body”: suffering from long Covid, they recount their “stations of the cross”

Sandra Guerrero et Christelle Toustou. MIDI LIBRE – Sophie GUIRAUD

Like 2 million French people, Sandra Guerrero and Christelle Toustou suffer from long Covid, a post-infection illness with multiple disabling symptoms. They tell us about their daily difficulties.

“The Stations of the Cross. Not being taken seriously, asking for tests while seeming like a hypochondriac, always having to go back to the GP who didn't believe me.”

“Faced with the multitude of symptoms, I was either depressed or lazy, and so on.” “First I saw my general practitioner who told me that I was depressed, then menopausal"… first, the difficulty in feeling "listened, understood and recognized" by a healthcare professional.

Then, the feeling of a lack of coordination: "I am accompanied regularly by specialists who remain focused solely on their specialty&quot ;.

And then "diagnostic errors", a "recognition disparate"… the patients' association #ApresJ20 born in October 2020, provides a very gloomy picture of living with the disease, based on the collection of experience that Sandrine Guerrero, the delegate Occitanie, based in Sain-Génis-des-Fontaines (Pyrénées-Orientales), sent 56 patients.

For her, as for Christelle Toustou, who testified before the health professionals gathered in Montpellier, were things simpler ? "He told me It took fourteen months to have a diagnosis, but I had professionals in front of me who were attentive", testifies Sandrine Guerrero, 49 years old, on a humanitarian mission in Central America when she first caught Covid. No hospitalization, but, very quickly, numerous symptoms which today earned him recognition of disability at 75%: < em>"I walked 10 km a day, I rode a motorbike, I’had never had a health problem in my life. Today I walk with a cane and I can't stand for more than 5 minutes,reports this "patient partner" which is involved in the training of future nurses and physiotherapists.

"We have to live differently", concludes the Catalan, under medication treatment and regular physiotherapy sessions, which can stay in bed "a day or a week" when she pushed too hard, "it could be cognitively, emotionally, or after putting away the dishwasher".< /p>

In a 90 year old body

"Overnight, I found myself in a 90-year-old body", he explains Christelle Toustou, dynamic ex-executive at Health Insurance, who led family and professional life at full speed.

Well taken care of for multiple symptoms, diagnosed in June 2021, recognized as disabled in December 2022, she slowly returned to work last July, after several aborted attempts. 7 hours a week, then 10 hours, soon 14 hours she hopes… hellip; a time interspersed with hospitalizations, "I am coming out of a third protocol at the Propara center, I already know that I will return", says the Montpellier woman, who was "lucky enough to be able to retrain" to health insurance.

"My priority was to return to work, pay attention to dressing, doing my hair, putting on makeup…"< /em> even if it is " no longer the same". "I am picking things up little by little, I have even managed to return, but without being negative, I know that I will never return to what I call a normal state. I had to stop comparing, to measure the progress I've made since I got sick.