The Tyranny of Stairs

When my Long Covid symptoms  were at their worst I remember how much I hated stairs. In fact, I feared them. This may seem incomprehensible to people who go up and down stairs without a second thought. However, if you are impacted by Long Covid, and some of the over 200 symptoms it can involve, stairs and other small things in day-to-day life are no joke. Each can be a huge challenge, and those challenges make other small things in life that much harder to do. Things that many people take for granted, things that I took for granted before experiencing Long Covid in March 2020. 

Long Covid symptoms were debilitating. Still, I count myself lucky in the Long Covid world - my symptoms were not considered severe and were nowhere near as bad as some. I was able to get out of the house and be a little active. I don’t say this to minimize my symptoms, which made me feel like my world was ending, but to acknowledge that some people struggle even more . I was not functioning normally and was very unwell. I faced near term health issues and an elevated risk of serious health risks. My heart rate was permanently 20+ beats per minute above where it should have been, and regularly spiked up to 180 or 200 beats per minute with even mild activity. Clinical and diagnostic tests all came back normal, but I knew this was far from reality.

Before COVID I ran regularly, hiked mountains, swam, went to the gym and more. At the office, the elevator was something I rarely used, opting to take the stairs to sneak some extra fitness. In March 2020 all that changed overnight… 

We only had a single flight of stairs at our home, but my heart rate would spike so badly going up that I had to stop part way up to take breaks and let my heart rate settle down before carrying on. The stairs felt like they stretched on for miles, evoking cinematography from Hitchcock movies like Vertigo. But this wasn’t something out of a film. It was all real, painfully real. My family were seeing me go through it and could scarcely believe their eyes.   

I went to great lengths to avoid the stairs wherever possible. I would try to get organized and gather all I needed in one trip to minimize the number of times I needed to go up and down the stairs. This was a good idea, but didn’t work in practice. The dark irony was that symptoms like brain fog and memory issues meant that being organized was also more difficult than usual. Without fail, at least one important thing would be left on another floor and I would be faced with the choice of deciding if I could live without that item, or if I was going to gear up for another trip up and down the stairs.

Either brain fog or heart rate issues would have been challenging on their own. When these symptoms were layered on top of each other, it made the whole situation feel overwhelming and unmanageable.

The knock on consequences were small and large. At the small end, it meant I had to cope without things I wanted, like a specific pen or sweater. At the larger end, it made things like cleaning the house or doing home improvement projects seem like insurmountable tasks. Moving a large volume of items around the house was nearly impossible, so items accumulated in the wrong place, making it harder to clean and more difficult to find things I needed. This added to the sense of feeling stuck, unwell and with limited ability to do anything about it. In the meantime the house felt disorganized and chaotic, again making it more challenging to be organized and cope with symptoms.  

My body was not functioning on many different levels, and I worried about the longer-term health implications. It seemed that the added stress on my heart alone would mean that my body would simply wear out within the next few years. This longer-term health concern was hanging over me, but the day-to-day challenges were the thing that absorbed most of my energy.

The challenges with stairs are a perfect illustration of my Long Covid experience; how symptoms like heart rate spikes, memory issues and fatigue layer on top of each other to make it seem like nothing in your life works, and even small things present a huge challenge. As I started to feel better, stairs were a barometer of my improvement. They went from something that required careful consideration to something that I built into my day for extra exercise. 

The other day I popped up the stairs without thinking, and then suddenly stopped. The contrast from before was stark and I let myself go back to when I had to stop for a rest part way up the steps. I have been able to find a successful symptom management path, a return to fitness and feel more like myself. I still need to actively manage my health and pay attention in ways that I didn’t need to before, but my body feels like it is “working” again.

That said, I will always remember the time when stairs looked and felt like a challenge that stretched for miles. I know millions of people are still facing similar challenges. To each of them, remember you are not alone, people understand what you are going through and there is hope for improvement.   

Warmly,
Katie