Long Covid and My Journey Back to Life

II was 33 years old when I fell ill with covid in February 2022. I was double vaccinated, a decision I partly made because my brother had been suffering from long covid since his infection in January 2021. It was a severe flu for two weeks, with pronounced exhaustion and wandering symptoms – cough, runny nose, headaches, loss of taste – but without further complications. In the following weeks, however, a persistent exhaustion remained, along with a constant feeling of a swollen head and dizziness, heart palpitations, and a rapidly increasing pulse. On good days, I would attempt to go running, vacuum the flat or bike to the train station. But after every physical activity, the symptoms worsened. Over the following months, they were joined by abdominal cramps, a pressure on my ears, chest tightness, sleep disturbances, a blurred vision, brain fog, the inability to regulate my temperature and a high sensitivity to sensory stimuli. A strange set of symptoms, for which my physician found no explanation, except: Long Covid.

Diagnosed with a mystery illness
Long Covid is a generic term for a vast variety of symptoms that can linger months and years after a coronavirus infection. Its severity runs the gamut – from mild, increased fatigue in daily life to confining people to bed in completely darkened rooms with severe pain and relieing on tube feeding. I would only learn much later that my symptoms were not a new penomena, but have made people suffer silently for a century at least. They were called different names, though most commonly Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), if they were then diagnosed as such and not just labeled people’s imagination, since there were no biolocial markers for their symptoms. A viral infection is one of it’s possible triggers, along with bacterial infections, emotional trauma, stress, vaccines and others.

Since my brother had already unsuccessfully gone through two rehab stays, numerous visits to conventional medical specialists, and a CT scan by this point, I saw little hope in those. Early on and for almost a year, I tried homeopathy, but without success. I experienced a first improvement after four months. It was spring, I had just moved to a new place, fasted for five days, done breathing exercises and gentle yoga. By mid-June, I was doing so well that I could travel to Berlin by train, and on the way back, I felt so healthy that I didn’t think twice before sprinting with heavy luggage to catch a connection after my  train was delayed. Two days later, I had a fever and a sore throat. And all the symptoms were back at once, joined by strong muscle tensions, emotional irritability and easily triggered anger.

Falling deep
I canceled work assignments and travels. On the recommendation of an other covid long hauler, I started an oxygen therapy and took supplements. I was instructed to pedal lightly on a stationary bike with an oxygen mask for 15 minutes, while my pulse and lactate levels were monitored. After each session, I felt a bit worse. And after the third time, I crashed. I could no longer walk the short stairs up to my house without increasing my symptoms. And at night, I would wake up hyperventilating with a feeling of shortness of breath that only subsided after strenuous hours. From that moment, I spent two months completely at home, oscillating only between bed, kitchen, and hammock. On good days, I could read for half an hour. Or scroll listlessly through YouTube Shorts. I was advised to take an artemisia annua tincture and do liver compresses at noon. But the only think that eased my state was complete rest. For days, for weks, for months. Towards autumn, the symptoms gradually decreased somewhat. In September, I tried fasting again. Although I broke it off after three days as the symptoms became too strong, I noticed a slight improvement. I could go for little strolls with the dog by then. But working was out of the question.

I still remember my 34th birthday. It was a rainy autumn day. My parents came to visit me, we went to the lake nearby and huddled together under a climbing tower on a children’s playground to take cover from the rain. It was one of the few times in my adult life I have cried in front of my parents. All my attempted words became tears and sobs. For seven months, my life had been on hold, my plans cancelled, my days spent in a blurry, lonely emptiness, with no understanding of the cause for this mystery illness, or a cure, and the grim notion of it being incurable looming over my fate.

During the summer, someone had told me about Ayurvedic clinics in India. And in the fall, I went for Ayurvedic massage once a week. It felt helpful, even though the 30-minute train ride was strenuous. And when I crossed the streets, I felt like 90 years old and convinced that the drivers saw it as a provocation. Since I didn’t encounter any therapy with a prospect of healing in Switzerland and was longing to travel again, I decided on a cure at Ayurveda Yoga Villa in southern India. I have traveled a lot in my life and had been to India five years earlier. The country felt familiar. And I planned the trip meticulously: taxi to the airport, 6-hour flight to Doha, 24 hours of rest in a hotel, 4-hour flight to Calicut, 3 days of rest in a hotel, 4 hours by taxi to the clinic. I arrived there on January 2, 2023.

A healing journey to India: Ayurvedic Therapy
The first three weeks were extremely strenuous. My diet consisted solely of pumpkin soup, sweet lime, and watermelons, and my already slim body lost 7 kilos. I received a daily enema, celery juice, a massage, and a bitter antiviral and heavy metal-binding bark mixture that the clinic had developed during the covid-pandemic. I shuttled between bed, treatment room, hammock, and dining table throughout the days. I was extremely weak. After two weeks, I wanted to quit everything. I considered my treatment to be utterly incompetent and had no hope that it would cure me. Only the encouragement of a fellow patient and a change of doctor made me stay.

When I was finally allowed to eat somewhat normally again, I noticed first my joy coming back. The symptoms were still there, my walks were limited to a few hundred meters, there was this constant pressure on my ears, and I only slept four or five hours a night. But the joy was back. The gratitude, for which I created an early morning ritual. And I felt like dancing, so I ordered bluetooth headphones. At first, I just swayed gently to the music, until I dared to move more intensively. This intuitive dancing would accompany me from that day until today. It allowed to move while remaining relaxed, so that I didn’t experience a crash afterward. The daily yoga classes would however trigger a deterioration of symptoms and muscle pains on the following days.

I stayed for two and a half months. I was discharged a bit better than when I arrived. And with a strict dietary plan: half a liter of fresh celery juice after waking up, sprouts for breakfast, salad and vegetables for lunch, no sugar, no white carbs, no gluten, no dairy products, no meat and a list of supplements (omega3, d3 and b-vitamines). Since I had to leave India, I found a relaxed beach town in Sri Lanka for my further convalescence. I could travel reasonably relaxed, but my stress tolerance remained low, and the frustration and sadness about it gradually increased again. After two months, I went to an Ayurvedic clinic again for two weeks, this time a more luxurious facility at Sen Wellness in Sri Lanka, and was treated with enemas, herbs, massages, baths, and acupuncture. Afterward, I moved from the summer heat on the coast to the mild mountains.

And finally the upturn came. The symptoms disappeared. My walks extended. I carefully explored my newly gained range of movement. I even climbed a few hundred meters up a small mountain. A month later, I was able to travel three hours in a rickety bus to a monastery. The only thing I continued to avoid was sport, as I reacted with symptoms in the days that followed – except from dancing. There followed two more months of symptom-free summer travel joy. I went back to India, spent a month in Auroville, cycled under the burning sun at 40°C and ate more of what I wanted, including two eggs for breakfast. I reeled through Mumbai’s urban jungle and flew to Rishikesh at the foot of the himalayas to train with an indian hand analysis teacher. I wrote to my parents from the airport: Long Covid is over. And thought I was back in life.

A second relapse at the Ganga
Until a sleepless night with partying tourists outside my room at the shores of the holy river Ganga, the emotional stress of a harsh rejection when I complained about it, on top of four nights of poor sleep. The next day I got sick. And a few days later, all the symptoms were back: the constant exhaustion, the pressure in my head, the sensitivity to noise, the palpitations, the dizziness, the insomnia. I spent a week at an Ayurvedic wellness resort with little medical expertise, where I was declared perfectly healthy. Then flew back to the clinic in Kerala. I arrived on my birthday, and fell ill again shortly after. I was too weak for intensive treatments. And the place no longer seemed right for me this time. A month later, I flew back to Switzerland, with an equally meticulously planned trip, this time in business class. On arrival, I felt only slightly better than when I left nine months earlier.

What I did have in my mental travel baggage, though, was a healing approach I trusted firmly. I was made aware of Anthony William a few months before, by a woman who healed from severe chronic fatigue by following his protocols. As the Medical Medium, Anthony William has gained some fame in the US by presenting an explanation and nutrition-based healing approach for many chronic diseases, which he derives from the voice of a spirit in his ear. So far, so mystical. But since my Ayurvedic doctor’s dietary recommendations, which led me to three powerful and symptom-free months, seemed to trace back to him – especially the early morning celery juice – I gave him the benefit of the doubt and started listening to his podcasts during my relapse in India. Back in Switzerland, I read one of his books and found a plausible explanation for my symptoms with an impressively precise description of the processes in my body that matched my perception: a latent chronic inflammation of the nerves, triggered by neurotoxic waste of a reactivated Epstein-Barr virus, co-conditioned by toxic heavy metals, a poorly detoxifying liver, exhausted adrenal glands and triggered by adrenaline rushes. He proposes an antiviral and liver-cleansing diet, avoiding gluten, dairy products, eggs and radical fats in favor of vegetables, fruits, berries, celery juice and specific supplements.

The next four months I spent juicing celery, making heavy metal detox smoothies, collecting wild herbs in the fields, sprouting gram and taking supplements. I sometimes felt a little better, sometimes a little worse, while the raw vegetables were hard on my digestion , the lemon juice on my teeth and the winter on my psyche. My stress tolerance was very low and working was unthinkable. I stayed in the room of my childhood at my parents home. From there, I watched the leaves fall from the trees. The rain. The wind. The clouds. While days were passing by. I didn’t leave the house except for walks in the woods. Happy though that I was able to stroll around.

Finding new hope: The Lightning Process
In January 2024, I heard for the first time about an NLP training program called the Lightning Process. I read a book by a young german woman who healed after many years of CFS, in a surprisingly short time, only through regulating her nervous system using a mental training process. I was very skeptical, but curious. And I really needed a new aproach, since I felt stuck where I was. I listened to the introductory audio course by Dr. Phil Parker, who had developped the training. And a month later, I traveled to Geneva for a three-day training. It was my first train journey since arriving back in Switzerland.

The first few hours of the course were exhausting. Just sitting and listening put a lot of strain on my system. But after the second day, my stress tolerance had already increased noticeably. On the third day, I traveled home the same evening and was even able to talk to my parents in the evening after regulating the symptoms that had arisen. In the weeks that followed, my capacity increased steadily and the symptoms decreased. I was able to drive again without feeling drunk. After two weeks, I was able to work longer hours at the computer again for the first time. I celebrated the first 500 meters I was able to jog without crashing. The first kilometer, the first two kilometers, the first five kilometers…

The Lightning Process is a fascinating training program developed 25 years ago by health psychologist Dr. Phil Parker. It teaches an understanding and a specific procedure for influencing physical processes through changes in mental states – essentially the conscious application of the placebo effect. Through targeted alterations of thought states, neural processes can be trained to relax the nervous system and stimulate healing processes. The approach is based on methods of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) as well as insights from psycho-neuro-immunology and neuroplasticity. It assumes that certrain chronic illnesses are linked to appropriately trained (and retrainable) neuronal processes on the one hand, and on the other, particularly in the case of CFS, to reproducing stress states in the nervous system, which get us stuck in a constant fight-flight mode and weaken healing processes as well as the immune, digestive and sleep systems. This does not mean that the illness or its cause is psychological in nature. In the case of Long Covid, the trigger is a pathogen. However, by influencing neural processes through mental states, disease patterns can be counteracted and healing facilitated.

The joy of a new life
I started writing this post to celebrate my first run for 8 kilometers in 45 minutes. The same day I had finished editing a master’s thesis for the first time in two years, in my former profession as a freelance copy-editor. Today, four months after the training, I am regularly running for 11 kilometers, and I even went on a five hours long protest march through Berlin in the face of the horrors happening in Gaza, with all the emotional intensity and police violently arresting peaceful protesters. Five months prior, I couldn’t even engage in a discussion with a friend on the subject, since any emotional stress would lead to days of severe symptoms. 

It’s not just all over. Sometimes the symptoms come back – after intense stimuli, infections, frustration, coffee at the wrong time, an anesthesia at the dentist or a stressful mental state in sport, in social interactions or at work. However, I can now regulate these symptoms within a few hours, they do not lead to cascades and occur less and less frequently. I feel equipped with a tool and an experience that supports me powerfully beyond health on the way to a life that I really love.

This is the account of my personal healing journey. I wanted to keep it as authentic as possible, with all its twists and turns, hopes and disappointments, as I believe that there is no standard cure for a disease as complex as Long Covid. The most important thing I could pass on is the certainty that you can heal. During these two years, I found myself in many dark moments in which the possibility of healing seemed almost unattainable, and yet remained my most important tool – together with loving acceptance of the way things are, with calm, retreat, pacing, serenity and trust in the process.

I write these words with deep compassion for all those who are suffering from this terrible illness. My own brother lies in bed day and night in a completely darkened room directly above me. He hasn’t been able to leave his apartment for over a year, has to wear hearing protection most of the time and can only communicate the bare minimum via voice messages. He cannot read, look at a screen or listen to anyone for more than a few seconds. His nervous system reacts to the slightest stimuli with severe pain. I don’t know what his path will look like, but I deeply believe that he can find a way out of this illness. That everyone can.

There is a Vedic prayer which has grown close to my heart in India and which I would like to share with you:

Om Sarve Bhavantu Sukinaha, Sarve Santu Niramaya, Sarve Bhadrani Paschiantu, Ma Kaschtschid Dukabag Bavet.

May all beings be happy, may all beings be healthy, may all beings see the auspicious, may no one suffer.

In gratitude for the moment I have arrived at today, for all the support I have received on my path, with much compassion for this journey, and for everyone who’s right now walking on that path.

Om Sarve Bhavantu Sukinaha,
Sarve Santu Niramaya,
Sarve Bhadrani Paschiantu,
Ma Kaschtschid Dukabag Bavet.

May all beings be happy,
may all beings be healthy,
may all beings see the auspicious,
may no one suffer.

In gratitude for the moment I have arrived at today, for all the support I have received on my path, with much compassion for this journey, and for everyone who’s right now walking on that path.