Sometimes banal everyday tasks are the most revealing. “Last week, I wanted to make myself a sandwich,” Erik Kötter explains over the phone. So, you cut the cheese, cut the bread, spread on mustard and mayo, wash a little salad and you’re done. “I only got to halfway – then I needed a break,” recalls Kötter. “It’s a feeling I’ve never felt before.”
“Despite my experience and medical training, I didn’t really understand the immense suffering involved.”
There are, of course, terms for this all-encompassing exhaustion that takes hold of Long COVID patients. Erik Kötter knows them very well. He studied them in his role as a physician, and as a family doctor, he even cared for patients with Long COVID. “I supported them as much as I could,” says Kötter. “However, despite my training, I didn’t really understand the immense suffering involved,” says the doctor, whose story is being published here under a pseudonym.
Indescribable lack of ability
According to Erik, it is a completely new feeling, which is inadequately described by the word “fatigue”. “I had to fight to be able to say anything at all, to be able to raise my arms, to hold my phone.” In his view, if you haven’t experienced it yourself, it’s hard to imagine.
Erik Kötter cannot be accused of being particularly sensitive or self-pitying. That may have been the problem. After catching COVID-19, Kötter called in sick for a few days and worked from home while he was isolating. After three weeks, he went fully back to work.
Did he step back on the gas too soon?
“I wasn’t fully fit yet,” recalls Kötter. After a short sprint on his bike, he momentarily felt exhausted throughout his body and experienced dull pain in his muscles. However, it went away again. After each long day at work, he felt like a sack of potatoes. But the next morning, he felt OK again. “I just kept going. Sometimes you just have to push through,” says Kötter.
He ignored his body’s signals – and then came the crash. Since then, everything has changed. Even two months later, he still spends 95% of his time lying down, says the 38-year-old. “Now I can get up and clear away my dishes,” he says happily. “But I still have to take a break in between and afterwards.”
He ignored his body’s signals – and then came the crash.
What he finds particularly difficult is relying on help instead of being the one helping others. “My wife deserves a trophy. But I feel very guilty when I see how stressed she is,” says Erik Kötter. Before his illness, he helped out as best he could around the house and with the care of his four children, but now she has to take care of everything herself.
There for the children – as they are there for him
On good days, Kötter still sees some glimmers of light. He enjoys reading more with the children, helping out with homework and playing games. “It also helps me mentally. Without my family, I probably would have sunk into depression.” When Erik Kötter feels like it, he also reads crime novels that had remained unread for years, catapulting himself into another world where Covid is not an issue.
“You are not alone. It’s not just in your head – it’s a real disease.”
Alternatives for the doctor
He is also trying out alternative treatments, “even though I’m a house doctor. Fellow doctors have also advised me to try them out.” Acupuncture is one example. Does it help? For Erik, there are still some question marks. He just wanted to try it out: “But this is another area where I have to make sure I don’t do too much.”
“You are not alone”
Erik Kötter has responded positively to breathing exercises from audio books (available on Spotify, Audible or exlibris, for example). Are there any other tips that the family doctor would like to share with other people who are suffering? “I want other affected people to feel that they are not alone. It’s not just in your head. It’s a real disease.”
Picture source: Adobe stock photo
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