Our son turned yellow, and finally, the GP admitted they should have seen him sooner
- Long Covid Kids
- Dec 7, 2020
- 2 min read
Ethan first got ill in May 2020 when he was 10. It started with a strange creeping rash which appeared suddenly one day.
The rash and spread all over his body in hours, it came with stomach pains, heart palpitations, strange muscle spasms and twitching so we took him to A&E.
The Dr's there took a cursory glance and said it must be something 'viral' and sent us home.
After the whole family went down with the same symptoms as well as a loss of smell and sore throats we guessed it was covid-19.
Since May he's been left with these symptoms and a whole host more.
Severe stomach pains
Aching joints
Painful muscles
Sickness
Diarrhoea
Night terrors
Heart palpitations
Migraines
Brain fog
Numbness
Insomnia
Before May there wasn't a day that went by that Ethan wasn't doing a sport. He was a cross country champion for our city, a very keen footballer for his local team, part of our village cricket team and loved nothing more than surfing.
Since then each time he tries to take part in an exercise he ends up breathless, with a racing heart and stomach pains, it's heartbreaking as it means so much to him especially as all his friends are involved so he keeps trying but he's ended up in hospital twice because of it.
Good weeks and bad weeks.
In a good week he manages a full week at school, a bad week he manages a day here and there. The teacher normally sends him home because he's too embarrassed to say he feels sick again.
We're scared we've been left to deal with this on our own by the medical community, recently he turned yellow and we finally managed to get to see our GP who admitted they should have seen him sooner.
As with all long covid parents, we're scared he's been left with some long term organ damage.
We need more help, our children have lost so much time this year not being able to attend school, they can't afford to just wait and see if it gets better.
LongCovidKids.org is a parent and patient-led campaign & support group for parents of children with Long Covid. Our story started with a short film on long-lasting symptoms of Covid in children & we are working on The Long Covid Kids Study with PeopleWith
