A woman who believes she has contracted the UK’s longest-running coronavirus says the virus has ‘wiped her out of everything’ because she is still experiencing symptoms ten months later.
Nicola Kimberley, 53, believes she contracted the virus during a Christmas trip last year.
After spending a few months in and out of the hospital, when she tested positive in June, she was confirmed to have the virus.
Four months later, his symptoms are still so bad that he is ‘afraid to go to sleep’ because he was afraid he would not wake up in the morning.
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“I have no idea if I can ever fully improve,” he said.
Going to St. Lucia during Christmas, Nicola began to feel sick and spent her entire vacation in bed because of her sweat pool, high temperature, chills, cold sores, coughs and kidney and bladder infections.
Returning to his home in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, he was told that he had swine flu.
The former BBC journalist said: ‘Two or three GPs, an arthritis specialist, everyone who saw me in January and February could not figure out why I had these bizarre symptoms and they got worse.
‘I felt they all left on me. I felt more and more that there was something wrong with me.
‘My arms and legs were swollen and bright red and I couldn’t walk. I could not even open the door of the hematologist’s office.
‘I didn’t have the strength. I was wiped out. I never knew anything like this but no one believed me.
‘My own dad said I had “internetitis” (a term for an illness that was caught spending too much time on the internet) and I haven’t really talked to him since.
Since the positive test he was often admitted to the hospital, he said that some organs and glands had stopped working properly.
He said that for a few hours after the blur returned he lost his sight, he still felt arthritic, had pain in the joints and chest and had difficulty breathing.
The self-employed financial adviser said: ‘It’s a burning virus, it sits inside the body and hides before it comes out.
‘My longest period was seven days, when I started to get back to almost normal.
‘But the virus irritates you, you can’t get up the next day and your ears are bleeding too.
‘It’s the most horrible disease, everything that stays away from you takes it.
“You’re scared to go to bed thinking you won’t wake up in the morning. I have no idea if I’ll ever get better.”
Nicola said the virus has also caused ultimate damage to her mental health.
“I was a BBC radio journalist, I used to speak very clearly and now my short-term memory is ruined, Scrabble will kill my two-year-old,” he said.
Nikola has ‘gained strength’ from support groups of people who have been suffering from coronavirus for a long time.
He warned young people not to be resistant and to be aware of the dangers of the disease.
According to the University of Nottingham, the first known person to be infected with coronavirus in the UK was a 755-year-old woman who tested positive on February 21st.
A North Bristol NHS Trust discovery project study from August found that about three-quarters of patients admitted to a coronavirus hospital still retain symptoms after three months.
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