Post-Covid frustrations: Survivor struggling to get back on feet

Four-and-a-half weeks after his symptoms first began, and despite having since been given the all clear by a doctor, Calis Bruckmann is still struggling to get back on his feet after falling victim to Covid-19.

“It’s difficult. You can’t tell how long it’s going to go on for; no-one knows anything about this virus.

“And to not be infectious, but to be ill all the time – it takes a toll. You get into a very frustrated, almost depressive, mode,” the busy 29-year-old industrial designer told The Citizen.

When he first started feeling unwell, Bruckmann assumed he was just overworked. But then he got talking to someone whose friend had had the virus.

“They mentioned that their friend had had these excruciating headaches and as I was talking to this person, I realised I actually had a headache,” he said.

The following day Bruckmann went to get a test and then began quarantining.

A few days later, the results came back positive. Over the course of the next two weeks, he developed more symptoms including a sore throat, earache and shortness of breath.

“Some nights, while I was going to sleep, my heart would race. I felt like I was dying,” he said. But the constant headaches were perhaps the most pronounced.

“They were there 24/7 – when I went to sleep at night, when I woke up in the morning,” Bruckmann said.

“Even if I woke up in the middle of the night, they were there. My ears would be ringing and I’d have this pressure in my head.”

When after three weeks his symptoms were still persisting, Bruckmann got in touch with a doctor who advised him not to retest as this could result in a false positive but that he was likely no longer infectious.

“They checked all my vitals but they couldn’t pick anything up,” he said. When, still, his symptoms persisted, Bruckmann’s concerns began to peak.

“I started to think maybe I had a brain tumour, especially because the doctors couldn’t pick anything up.”

But then he learnt some people who had become infected, had experienced symptoms for up to 100 days. Bruckmann was this week back at work but said he had only managed to get in a total of around eight hours.

“The tricky thing with this is, during the process, I had moments where I had so much energy and I thought I was fine and even started to question whether or not I had Covid-19 or if I was just going insane.

“But as soon as I started to walk around for a bit, I’d start to feel really ill”.

He had acupuncture this week and said it had helped soothe the headaches but that they were still continuing.

“My short-term memory is also pretty short at the moment,” he added.

Bruckmann described Covid-19 as one of the worst sicknesses he’s ever had. “I’ve never been sick for this long in my life,” he said.

“It’s definitely one of the worst things I’ve ever caught.”

– bernadettew@citizen.co.za

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