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She paid for what she had already picked out and left.
The "mental mist", as she describes her inability to concentrate,
and permanent fatigue after performing the simplest of everyday
tasks have constrained her life for the past year, since her March
2020 coronavirus infection developed into what doctors call a post-COVID
syndrome, or "long COVID".
"I feel like my 91-year-old mother physically," says Dominguez, a
mother-of-two and a social worker specialising in disabilities, who
has been on medical leave since November.
A recent survey by the Spanish Society of General and Family
Physicians (SEMG) - which interviewed 2,120 people of whom 1,834 had
symptoms compatible with the disease - found the typical profile of
a post-COVID syndrome patient was a 43-year-old woman with 36
symptoms on average.
While severe COVID-19 infections are more frequent in men, long-haul
COVID seems to affect women more - they accounted for around 80% of
the cases in the SEMG study.
Eight women, and two men, spoke to Reuters about their experience of
long-COVID, and sat with a photographer for portraits shot through a
"fog" of blue plastic to visualise how the condition made them feel.
Like Dominguez, sufferers often report being unable to do routine
tasks such as shopping or cleaning. For some, even watching a movie
can be exhausting.
The World Health Organisation said in February that understanding
the post-COVID conditions was "a clear priority", while pointing out
that "regrettably, some (patients) were met with disbelief or lack
of understanding".
Several women who spoke to Reuters, including 23-year-old
anthropologist Shalini Arias, said doctors initially shrugged off
their symptoms, while bosses or colleagues sometimes thought they
were exaggerating.
"I've felt doubly misunderstood, as if I were a hypochondriac and as
if I were a high-maintenance woman seeing the doctor because I've
nothing else to do," Arias said.
'I'M MUCH CLUMSIER'
The WHO says roughly one out of 10 coronavirus patients remains
unwell after 12 weeks, and many for much longer.
[to top of second column] |
Two other studies, by Britain's
Leicester University and the International
Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infections
Consortium, have suggested women in their 40s
and 50s are more at risk of long term problems
following COVID-19 infections.
Year-long symptoms have made Maria Eugenia Diez, a 43-year-old
nurse, give up exercise and forego medical conferences, where she
has trouble concentrating. She sometimes feels like
a rookie at work, despite her 20 years experience, and has invented
routines to remember tasks she used to perform automatically.
"It happens to me when I drive. I'm much clumsier. I have to think
every day how many gears the car has, where are the rear-view
mirrors, the wiper and the water, or the pedals," she said.
Anna Kemp, a 51-year-old Briton living in Spain for almost 30 years,
says the condition affected her ability to communicate in Spanish
and she stopped watching complex TV shows because she could not
follow the plot.
SEMG vice-president Pilar Rodriguez Ledo said her research team was
in the initial phase of studying whether hormones could be a factor
in long COVID, since pregnant women appear to be less susceptible,
or whether the answer is in a gender-specific response of the immune
system.
Beatriz Perez, a 51-year-old computer engineer, used to go trekking
on weekends, but now is rarely able to complete her personal
challenge of walking all the way down the stairs from her
eighth-floor apartment, not to mention up.
Permanent fatigue and forgetfulness have kept her off work, and she
says "the worst thing is living with the uncertainty" of not knowing
when or if she will recover.
Such fears trouble many, but nurse Diez is trying to stay positive.
"I'm adapting to what I have, I will enjoy what I have now and I
can't keep thinking about what I had before," she said. "It's hard
because I miss it a lot."
(Writing by Emma Pinedo; Editing by Andrei Khalip and Alex
Richardson)
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