Long COVID can cause cognitive impairment

Sarah Taylor is a university lecturer who first caught COVID in early 2022 when the Omicron wave of the virus was at its peak…

Sarah - The headache lasted for months and then other symptoms appeared. Stiffness. Getting up and down a staircase was a sheer act of will because I was like the tin man just couldn't really bend my legs. The biggest issue though was cognition. Spatial reasoning is particularly problematic. I go to chair base yoga and I can only do half the session because I've just got so exhausted. But I'm not just getting physically exhausted. The lady is telling me where to put my hands. And as time progresses, I get more and more confused and lose the ability to sort of coordinate my hands. And the brain fog starts kicking in. So it is actually the brain fog more than the physical. That is why I only do half the session. The ability to think is part and parcel of my job. And in the first few months after getting covid, I couldn't think. I couldn't process information, words. I was on sick leave for a year. Some days a text message would be a few words. I couldn't write anything that made sense and I couldn't speak to make sense either. When I got referred to the long covid clinic, I got a swallow test and all that kind of thing, which was very useful because swallowing was an issue. And that has now been largely resolved. But no one really worked with me on my cognition and the sort of speech issues.