Long Covid: 'The blood in me feels like it's hot'
21 October 2020, 18:24
Long Covid: "The blood in me feels like it's hot"
This is the moment a long-term Covid sufferer told LBC's Shelagh Fogarty that her blood "feels like it's hot" and that "as it moves around it burns".
The exchange took place as Health Secretary Matt Hancock has urged people to follow guidelines to protects themselves and others from the potentially debilitating long-term impact of Covid-19.
Symptoms of long Covid include fatigue, protracted loss of taste or smell, respiratory and cardiovascular symptoms and mental health problems.
Kaisha from Hammersmith told Shelagh: "Since about June, my long Covid symptoms are to do with my blood and my blood vessels, so I constantly have this burning...the blood in me feels like it's hot and as it moves around it burns.
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"When they took my blood, it was visibly lumpy so eventually they tested it and my haemoglobin levels were too high."
The caller, who said that her symptoms began on March 20th, also said: "I've got quite a few friends who are in this long Covid group with me and some of them have got blood clots in their lungs."
Kaisha also explained: "I'm 41-years-old. I'm a self-employed dance teacher. Before Covid I was teaching 24 classes a week.
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"I consider myself quite fit. And I could barely walk around my house without being completely out of breath."
Despite saying that she was exhibiting symptoms in March, Kaisha didn't test positive for the virus until early-June. She says her GP insisted she didn't have the virus up until that point.
She told Shelagh: "Because I'm asthmatic I sort of know my lungs quite well and I notice any little change. But this wasn't like asthma. When I was talking I was having to take breaths in between most words and it was quite hard to talk on the phone."
