Impacts on Work and Career
Long COVID had an impact on the working lives and careers of the people we spoke with because it affected their mental and physical capacity. Brain fog and physical fatigue made it difficult and, sometimes, impossible for some people to carry out their jobs. This sometimes led to financial difficulties if the affected person didn’t have public or private insurance to help replace lost income. It was also emotionally challenging for people who loved their jobs or for whom work and career was an important part of their identity.
Impacts of brain fog
One of the most common factors impacting people’s ability to work was brain fog, or an inability to concentrate, focus, or deal with complex or abstract information including working with numbers. Many of the people we spoke with described themselves as experiencing brain fog which impacted their ability to function day to day. People whose jobs involved a lot of intellectual work were especially hard hit. As Jason explained, “I’m a knowledge worker, which means that my day-to-day activities require very focused attention and critical thinking. I’ve had fairly consistent brain fog that gets in the way of that and timelines that don’t move … I am forcing myself to try to get myself in the right frame of mind to output this … very cognitive, heavy work that needs to be done.” Maggie is a consultant and research administrator. She told us, “I agreed to participate in a strategy meeting a couple of weeks ago. It was three hours. It took me a week to get over it. Because it was three hours of … actively thinking and really trying to facilitate a strategy development for an organisation. So, it was hard thinking and I had not appreciated how exhausted that would make me feel.”
Chris has a supportive employer but still feels that brain fog is impacting his career.
Transcript
You know, understanding only goes so far. The work still needs to get done and there’s still things that I can’t do as readily or at all sometimes. Especially because my job is pretty analytical and I have these days where I have this brain fog, have this lack of […]
Jennifer 2 is a lawyer. She decided to retire because she feared that she would make serious mistakes at work.
Transcript
I used to be really, really good at multitasking. I was also very, very good at reading a file with a complex set of facts. I think my strength was being able to read something and immediately say, “OK, here’s the problem.” But what I started doing is I started […]
Impacts of physical weakness and fatigue
Some of the people we spoke with had jobs that required them to bend, lift, be on their feet for long periods of time, or do some kind of physical work. Others had desk jobs but could equally be affected by physical fatigue. All found that they either had to modify their working arrangements, reduce their hours, or stop working altogether.
William works as a corrections officer. He said, “Managing work with this has been a bit of a challenge because my job is so physical. I’ve had modified work so I don’t do what I used to do but I am still at work. I’m gradually increasing my hours.” Angela is a self-employed cleaner. She “started cancelling clients or … instead of having two a day, I booked in just one every second day … Most of my clients are about three hours. And by the two-hour mark, I was “Oh my God, I just want to go home.” Lyse worked as a warehouse clerk which involved bending, lifting and moving boxes, and going up and down ladders. She said, « Si … Je me penche juste pour attacher mes souliers … il faut que je m’assoie puis que je lève mon pied pour l’attacher si je ne veux pas être étourdie. » [If … I just bend over to tie my shoes … I have to sit down and then lift my foot to tie it if I don’t want to get dizzy.] Translation from original French.
Kari wonders if she'll ever be able to return to nursing.
Transcript
They don’t know if and when I’ll be able to return to work or if I’ll even be able to return to nursing. From what I understand so far, a lot of people have been able to return to work, but not in the same capacity. And for nursing, it’s […]
Carrying on at work despite the health impacts
Several of our participants had tried to carry on with work despite their long COVID symptoms because of dedication to their jobs, financial necessity, and/or fear of stigmatisation. All soon realised that this reluctance to step back from work due to their health was causing them harm.
For example, Coucoute has a very physical job as a care assistant. She relies on the salary but found she was unable to work more than two days a week because she was so “burnt out and tired.”
Violaine badly wants to carry on teaching.
Transcript
Je voulais absolument continuer à enseigner. Donc j’essayais de donner des cours, on donnait des cours à distance à ce moment-là. J’essayais de les donner sur mon écran. C’était tellement difficile, j’avais tellement ni énergie, ni voix, ma voix très rapidement est devenue caverneuse, et puis quelques semaines après je […]
Carrie 2 is a family physician who worries that she is letting people down. She recalls a conversation with her physiotherapist who encouraged her to dramatically reduce her workload.
Transcript
I was so proud of myself and I looked at him and I said, “I’ve reduced my hours, so I’m only seeing patients for seven hours.” And he’s so good. He looked at me and he said, “That’s really good. I’m glad that you’re doing that.” And he said, “But […]
Jason worries about how his employer will react if he asks for special arrangements.
Written testimony
It’s very difficult to talk about. And, it’s something where I’m – yeah, it’s been hard for me to talk about it and reframe work arrangements. I did back in December when I went through like a severe bout of like burnout I should say, I ended up taking some unused vacation time and just like used that for some time off, and like it really stood in for like basically short-term disability. I wasn’t able to do – I had all these things that I wanted to do during those few weeks off but I wasn’t able to do them and I felt very, very bad. I did ask, like before taking this time off, to switch my role responsibilities and that seemed to help in the short term, but with the demands that the company that I work for has, I’m more or less doing the kind of thing that I was doing like going into December, and despite the commitment from the company to be accommodating and allow me to focus on a less stressful activity.
I: And so what made the conversations difficult with your employer?
Well, one, like not being able to talk – like really know how to frame and talk about the health issues that you have for fear of stigma, not being believed. For instance, if someone were to tell their boss that they had like fatigue and brain fog it’s just – it just seems to me to be outside of the norm and something that just would not be taken very seriously. If someone has anxiety and depression, like similar – whether or not your boss reacts well to it or like how seriously they would take it, those kinds of symptoms on their own, like they do impact the person’s perception of you in the future. Those symptoms seem – like they associate those things with your personality and who you are, rather than like an illness that you’re managing.
Grief due to the loss of work or career
Most of the people we spoke with told us that losing the ability to work as they had before long COVID had a big emotional impact on them. Some had spent many years training for, and working in, their chosen field. Others said that being productive gave them a sense of purpose. Many felt that the change in their working life impacted their identity. Several said that the change in their ability to work caused them grief and left them with a sense of mourning.
Melissa felt lost without work. As she explained, “It’s not so much the monetary side of it, it’s more just having a purpose in life … My job always kind of defined … who I was and what I stood for and … and I can’t do it right now, so I’m like what is the point?” Lori missed the social aspect of her job. “There’s lots of friends that I work with so it’s interactions for sure … seeing people and laughing and just being with people. I work with a lot of good people.” Cher was bed ridden because of her severe long COVID symptoms. But for her, “the hardest part, is not losing my personal ability to move but losing my job. I mean, I spent 12 years in school to be able to do my job. I love it. I chose it on purpose. And it is gut-wrenching to have to walk away from it.” Jean said she feels like “I’ve lost control over the direction of my life … not being able to read properly off of a computer screen, having to drop … out of that course that I was taking … I obviously I thought I’d be working a lot longer.” For Jennifer 1 the thought of “not working in theatre … is crippling because it’s been my life.”
Angela wonders what will become of her if she can't go back to work.
Transcript
I’m a workaholic. So it’s not being able to work, is probably the biggest emotional part of it, of being what if I can’t go back to work at some point, like what do I do? I’ve had the cleaning business for 25 years. I could get a job at […]
For Violaine, the loss of her career is like a bereavement.
Transcript
C’est très difficile faire le deuil du travail, le deuil d’un travail que j’adore! Un milieu de travail que j’adore, des collègues… Je deviens vraiment émotive (elle pleure). Voilà! Émotivement oui, il y a des moments tellement difficiles (elle pleure toujours). Là ici j’ai trouvé beau les bibliothèques avec tous […]