Apparently there is nothing wrong with Sandra van den Heuvel from Oss (42). But the once active, sporty and social woman sometimes no longer recognizes herself. She has Lung COVID. “I’ve been hoping for fourteen months that things will get better next week.”
At the beginning of last year, Sandra van den Heuvel contracted corona, like so many people. But for one reason or another, the infection is very serious for her. She couldn’t get rid of the complaints and still experiences the after-effects every day. With a colleague from Avans Hogeschool in Den Bosch, Marjowella Stael, she wrote a booklet about her experiences.
Book about Lung COVID
‘Long Covid? How I experience that.’, is the title. It can be interpreted as an invitation to people who have known Sandra for a long time. What exactly is wrong with the once energetic woman? The book is also and especially intended for all other interested parties, so that there is a little more understanding for the situation of the Avans coach – and tens of thousands of fellow sufferers.
Sandra describes in the booklet and in KRAAK., the Sunday magazine of Omroep Brabant tv, how she slowly but surely deteriorated. She could notice the deterioration of her physical and mental condition in her voice, her walking (“becomes more difficult”), the structural fatigue and palpitations.
“I always felt a mega-stress, even though there isn’t one. You can’t work, you can’t do sports, neither is eating out, maybe a modest main course,” says Sandra. She could also react hypersensitively to stimuli. Marjowella: “We used to be able to discuss everything very quickly. And thinking and talking and answering questions is often already too much. Once we were in the car together and I deliberately turned down the volume on the radio. Still, she wanted the sound off completely.”
There is still hope and love
Sandra understands that people do not properly assess her situation. She can barely do that herself. “At a certain moment I could only cry from fatigue,” says Sandra, who fortunately gradually experiences more moments when she thinks that nothing is wrong. But when she wants to do something, it turns out the opposite. There were days when Sandra even felt an obstacle for her husband, her daughters, in short: her immediate environment. Fortunately, she managed to struggle up out of the swamp. “I thought I was just a burden to them all, but I also felt a lot of love and hope and it’s still there.”