A once healthy and energetic mother-of-three was left bedbound for a year after the symptoms of long Covid left her with extreme pain daily.
Kirsty Huxter, who had three doses of the Covid vaccine months before she caught the virus in December 2022, suffered so badly she was ‘scared’ to move in case she ‘had a heart attack’.
The 46-year-old from Essex, like millions of people, first had mild symptoms, primarily a headache and tiredness — but a nightmare ensued over the following 12 months.
She went from being a budding writer who volunteered at her local church, to barley being able to move without going into ‘tremors’.
The only time she got out of bed was to go to the toilet.
‘There were barely any symptoms — it was only because my husband, David, had a headache that I took a test,’ she said.
‘Otherwise, I would have just thought I was a bit tired.’
Four days after testing positive, Mrs Huxter, who is mum to Rachel, 20, Leah, 17, and Elijah, 14, returned to her job as the manager of the youth charity since she ‘felt fine’.
But when the aspiring writer started to walk to work, she began to get out of breath.
‘I was also getting tired by late afternoon so I just tried to rest more,’ she said.
Although many people note tiredness as a side-effect of Covid, Mrs Huxter sensed something wasn’t right when she didn’t recover after a few weeks and her fatigue got worse.
‘I started to do click and collect instead of going to the supermarket because I didn’t think I could walk around for 45 minutes and I worked from home a few days a week. At this point, I was getting tired but otherwise felt fine,’ she said.
But a month later in February 2023, she started to feel ‘really bad’ and needed to stay in bed more frequently.
‘That was my first indicator that this would not just disappear,’ she said.
‘I continued for a few months pacing myself, barely leaving the house, just working from home, but still doing housework.
‘I noticed that after putting the bins out one night I felt absolutely exhausted — my muscles were burning.’
Around two million people in the UK are reported to live with long Covid, including 112,000 children, while US officials suggest one in ten people who catch the virus will develop the condition.
Extreme tiredness, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, dizziness, brain fog, joint pain and muscle aches are all tell-tale signs of the condition.
Mrs Huxter recalls finally feeling good after a few days of resting, five months after testing positive she was able to get out the house more.
But one night her debilitating symptoms came back.
‘I couldn’t stand up for very long — I felt like I was being pushed down to the ground,’ she recalled.
In June last year Mrs Huxter woke up at 4am alone at home with a racing heart, which didn’t subside.
She called an ambulance when she was ‘scared’ to move ‘in case she had a heart attack’.
But despite her ordeal, she was discharged from hospital and told she was ‘young and healthy’.
But two months later in August 2023, she was bedbound and only able to stand to get to the toilet.
‘I ate all my meals in bed. My sleep was unrefreshing and I would often be awake for hours during the night,’ she said.
She confessed she even struggled to read books because they gave her a headache as ‘the words went fuzzy on the page’.
Mrs Huxter said: ‘I could also only watch TV for about 30 minutes at a time as it exhausted me.
‘It can’t have been easy for my kids to watch their previously healthy mum become so radically different.
‘I’d rely on them to help with basic tasks, like bringing me food and water. My role as manager of the youth charity had to go as I’m not capable of doing that.’
It was in these ‘frightening and confusing’ times that Mrs Huxter found herself thinking a lot about death.
She said: ‘I didn’t think about my life or what I used to be able to do or what I couldn’t do because that felt overwhelming.
‘It was frightening and confusing. I thought a lot about death – was this the end? Should I start writing letters for my children in case this was it?’
Last September, she found herself struggling to breathe again and called an ambulance. She was then referred to an NHS long Covid clinic.
She recalls feel like she was being ‘poisoned’ and losing a stone due to gut issues.
‘When I told a paramedic this, she replied, “Well, at least you’re slim.” We even bought a cheap wheelchair online when I realised there was no way I could walk anywhere any more,’ she said.
After a lengthy battle with a variety of symptoms, Mrs Huxter, ‘desperate to try anything’ started using a neuromodulator, a small device which sends mild electrical signals that modulate the nervous system — similar to a TENS machine.
Despite it making her feel slightly better, she was still battling ongoing symptoms.
‘They come and go and sometimes new symptoms will appear, but there’s never a reason why a symptom will get worse or better,’ she said.
‘This makes it really hard to pace or track anything. I have gone through extreme fatigue, poor sleep, anxiety, brain fog, tingling, tremors, muscle pain, headaches, nausea and gut issues. Some have come and gone. Others, like fatigue, have been constant,’ she added.
Now, two years after her battle with long Covid began she can go for a walk, run a bath, pour herself a bowel of cereal and even look at her phone or computer for short spells. But it’s still a ‘world away’ from her ‘normal life’.
‘My day is measured in terms of energy. If I have a doctor’s appointment, that will be the only thing I can do that day as it will require energy to get dressed and be out of the house,’ she said.
She added: ‘My dream of being an author is not just on ice, it’s in the freezer. I don’t know what capacity I will regain, cognitively or physically, so I’m making no plans at all.’