TU/e employee Ina (62) had never had corona until last December. Yet straight away she found herself with long COVID. Of all the rotten luck! she thinks. But what she finds even more frustrating is not being able to actively do anything to aid her recovery. Ina's chief symptom is maintaining mental focus. While she is employed to fulfill a support function, she is currently working fewer than half her contracted hours.

She never failed to wear a face mask, got all her shots, and followed all the other rules. And it worked! ‘Ina’ (whose real name is known to Cursor) did not contract coronavirus. Not, that is, until December 2022, when she had a fever and lost her sense of smell and taste for a couple of days. A test confirmed it: positive.

Fortunately, she was soon back on her feet and after the Christmas vacation she was able to return to work. At least, that's what she thought. “But things didn't go at all well.” Her symptoms are not so much physical as concentration-related: “Every task that requires mental focus is energy-guzzling.”

During the early weeks, Ina's working day would be followed by a two-hour stint on the couch; dead to the world. “I really was bone-tired.” Since then she has been signed off as partially work incapacitated and instead of having a four-and-a-half day week, she is working four times a half day. As she is no longer capable of sustained deep concentration, her work consists mainly of tasks she can divide into manageable chunks. The ancillary activities she used to do for TU/e as someone who was keen to be involved, she's had to put on the back burner.

Brain fog

She tries to stay upbeat under these difficult circumstances. “I'm not managing to load my name list,” she says to her colleagues when brain fog prevents her calling a name to mind. Or: “My English isn't working,” when she is momentarily tongue-tied. But at the same time she is full of questions and concerns. “There's a reasonable chance that everything will be just fine, one the other hand, this situation could go on indefinitely.”

From the company physician she understood that long covid should be treated in the same way as a burnout: very slow reintegration, no overtaxing yourself, no going beyond your limits. That last one in particular is a challenge: “You only notice where your limit is when you've gone too far – which is exactly what you're not supposed to do.”

As someone who is full of get-up-and-go, not being able to actively work on her recovery is something she finds hard to stomach. “You have to let it all wash over you. That is deeply frustrating, but fretting about it doesn't do any good either.” So there's only one thing you can do: “Let it go, let it go, let it go.”

Understanding

She is pleased with the guidance she has received from the occupational healthcare service. “They have a very good understanding of long COVID and how to handle it.” Likewise, the understanding and support she gets from her colleagues and manager.

The only thing that sometimes leaves her grinding her teeth is the understandable wish expressed by management that mutually acceptable goals be set. Regrettably, that's just not possible right now. “I too would love to know the answer to a question like ‘how long roughly do you think this is going to go on for?’”

Conference

That testing when there's a suspicion of corona is no longer required is something Ina thinks is pretty crazy, in view of the severity of her symptoms. “Everyone thinks corona's done and dusted. But even recently there were dozens of cases among the academic staff. All delegates at the same international conference – it spreads like wildfire at events like that. We're underestimating it.”