Home » Consequences of Covid: “I was a successful manager, now I can’t even drive a car”

Consequences of Covid: “I was a successful manager, now I can’t even drive a car”

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THE FIRST day that the Covid attacked her, she was setting foot in the office. Leaning the bag on the desk, he felt a sort of compression in the chest, a feeling of oppression accompanied by weakness. “From that moment on, he explains after almost seven months, it was like a nightmare, a constant descent into the void”. This is the story of Maddalena, a successful manager, a 44-year-old woman who, after graduating from Bocconi, occupied one of the first chairs in a company in Lombardy. One capable of being away from home for up to 12 hours for work. Gym-goer and staunch supporter of well-being. Who, with two children, had to juggle lunches and dinners, nannies, playgrounds, schools and school meetings. Now Maddalena alternates armchair, garden, supermarket, bed. She works in smart working because they practically imposed it on her and, exhausted, she chose to be assisted by the clinic Long Covid of the teacher Antonio Pisani, neurologist of Mondino, who in April opened a center for the treatment of patients with post-Neuro-Covid symptoms at the Pavia institute (open on Wednesdays from 2 pm, you can access by calling the Mondino Cup), as well as in Milan and Rome.

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“That day I remember it well”

Maddalena in the morning around 8 used to get on her BMW to go to the company. It was a Tuesday seven months ago when he turned the key and started the car pointing it towards the office. “I remember that I had the budget in mind and I had brought with me some important documents consulted at home – she says -. Time was never enough and I often did this. I had greeted my two children promising them that I would take them to their grandmother. But Covid was booming and that was just a lie to keep them good. I knew that getting infected would be easy. You just had to look around to see it: friends and relatives who had had to rush to the hospital I had too. But the precautions the I took, and in any case I told myself that it would be less heavy than the previous time “.

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Long Covid, heal but lose your memory

by Fiammetta Cupellaro



“I lost contact”

“Placing the bag on the desk I began to lose contact. This is how I define that set of sensations that the Coronavirus brought me – recalls Maddalena -. Beyond the infection, from which I then recovered, they remained over time. That day seven months ago I distinctly felt that something was changing. I got a fever and started coughing, but it didn’t really feel like the flu. In the office, beyond the glass, I noticed that they were watching me, worried because I had unmistakable symptoms. That morning, tenaciously, I resisted despite the malaise that was spreading in my bones and the distrust of colleagues. Then, around lunchtime, I gave up. I took the bag and went home “.

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“How come it doesn’t pass?”

Isolation is the word that Magdalene has known from that day on, for at least a month. “I went to the ER and they gave me a swab. It was Covid, but I already knew it – he underlines -. They told me that, since I had no difficulty in breathing, I could be treated at home, obviously with a list of drugs to follow. The fever was at 38, I felt weak, but luckily I was breathing quite well. I took the list, said goodbye, and made my way home. I thought it would be resolved in a short time. And I felt pretty safe from being monitored by the family doctor. I told myself that I would win that fever. And in fact I was right, because the drugs were able to send her away, as well as the cough and migraine. However, I did not know that from that moment another door to the unknown would open: the long-term consequences generated by Covid “.

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Long Covid, what the doctor can do to treat the symptoms

by Irma D’Aria



“My brain is foggy”

“To understand: it is like when you return to work after a prolonged absence. It happens that, for example, you do not remember key steps when you use the computer, or you forget standard procedures – explains Maddalena -. Here I was like that, I am like that. I was isolated in a room of my villa for a few weeks, they passed me food and drink from the door. My children yelled at me “hello mom, goodnight mom”, and I replied pretending to be happy. Instead I was in tears. After three weeks I redid the swab and it was negative. I cheered. I made another one after 24 hours. Negative too. I said to myself: it’s over. Except, when I tried to get dressed and leave the house, I walked two meters into the garden and then turned around. I could not make it to the car: weakness assailed me, so strong that it was hard for me to speak. At that point I realized that it would not be easy to get out of it “.

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Frozen marriage

“My husband has always been understanding. Of course, at that point, it should have been more – continues Maddalena -. So it was. He agreed not to have sex with me anymore, to take on a good part of the parenting job, since I was almost always in the chair with my head in my hands wondering when it would end. He agreed to console me, telling me that it was a normal hospitalization. After the first month I started not sleeping. I spent the nights sitting in the armchair looking out the window. Also because, as soon as I closed my eyes, I seemed to fall into the void: an abyss of anguished images, accompanied by a sense of loss. The work, of course, remained pending, as if I had closed everything in a closet waiting for the right moment to take it out. Except that the right time was not coming. ‘

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Arm wrestling with depression

Maddalena says she expected it. “Of course living like this promotes bad thoughts and pessimism. So she came along: depression. I slipped into it quickly – she admits -. Everyone comforted me, but my head was somewhere else. So my husband took me to the Mondino. Almost a must to emerge. “You will see that we will make it”, he repeated to me like a mantra. At the neurological institute in Pavia they gave me exams and a kind of light psychotherapy. But most of all they gave me antidepressants and sleeping pills. They say that in the early days they are indispensable, they help to calm down and sleep. In fact, after the first three months of therapy things started to improve ».

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“Forced” smart working

A crack has opened for Maddalena. Covid has left her with confusion and, at times, disorientation, but she is trying to regain awareness. “When I spoke to the owners of the company saying that I wanted to try to go back to the office, I felt they were cold – he remembers -. They told me to take time, that there wouldn’t be all that urgency anyway. I read behind these sentences the fear that I was not up to par. In the end they surrendered to my insistence and “allowed” me to work in smart working. So, in the morning, I go to my computer and try to reconnect with the business world. But sometimes I can’t even focus on the screen. And then I forget things. Even today I struggle to put two thoughts in line. But I have my husband and my children next to me. When I look at them I think that, after all, I won on Covid “.

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