“When the one you love gets sick, you want to do something.” These are the words of Ron van Dolen from Oosterhout. And so from Wednesday he will walk from his hometown to Amsterdam. With the 120 kilometer walk he is raising money for research into long Covid, from which his wife Ilse suffers. “Her life has come to a complete standstill.”
Fairytale. This was how Ron and Ilse’s holiday was in Scotland in 2022. They wandered the streets of Edinburgh for hours. They walked through the forests and climbed rocky hills in the pouring rain. “We enjoyed it. We lived,” Ron reflects. Spain and Norway were still planned, but that dream fell apart when Ilse became infected with corona in January 2023.
Due to the disease, Ilse sleeps poorly, she has constant stress, pain in her head and stomach and she quickly becomes overstimulated. “The doctor said: ‘There is no reason why you won’t get better. Just sit through this, it will pass,'” Ilse looks back. “But after three months it became clear: this will not just pass.”
“I’m on the sidelines everywhere.”
Her life has changed drastically since then. “I can’t do anything anymore,” she says. No longer working at an elderly care institution in Teteringen, no longer rehearsing with her choir, no longer going out with friends and no longer visiting her parents or children. “I’m on the sidelines everywhere. You eventually get used to it, but it was very difficult for me.”
Ilse now spends most of her days in a dark room, wearing earplugs. She is deteriorating physically, although thanks to medication she is slightly less overstimulated. “One episode All of Holland Bakt I can have it now.” She receives visitors at most twice a week. “A friend had to die for this interview,” Ron adds with a smile.
Powerlessness and frustration dominate Ilse and Ron. The medical world is also at a loss, because there is no treatment yet for long Covid. “That is why money is needed for research,” says Ron, who is a volunteer at the Long Covid Foundation.
“I’m afraid I’m slipping further and further.”
From Wednesday he will walk from Oosterhout to Amsterdam, a distance of 120 kilometers. He expects it to be a tough journey. “I’ve never run more than ten miles in one day,” he laughs.
Ron wants to arrive in Amsterdam on Sunday, where he hopes to meet Anne Vroegindeweij. After a mild corona infection, she contracted long Covid, where she wrote the book in 2023 The stragglers wrote about. “She is now confined to bed in a dark room 22 hours a day,” says Ron. “It remains to be seen whether she can receive me, but she knows I am coming.”
Ilse fears that the same fate awaits her as Anne. “I’m afraid I’m slipping further and further,” she says softly. Still, she is happy that Ron is drawing attention to her illness with his walk. “Long Covid must become as important and self-evident as KWF Cancer Control or the Kidney Foundation. Then they can really make a difference.”
Ron nods. “Money for research is needed to give people like Ilse and Anne their lives back.” He has now achieved the target amount of four thousand euros with his campaign Ron’s 120.
