186 - From Bedbound to Thriving: How Jamie Overcame Long Covid

**Content warning for discussion of suicidal thoughts from around 8:45 for 2 minutes**

Jamie shares her powerful journey from being bedbound with Long Covid to full recovery, offering hope and practical insights into the healing process.

• Initially experiencing tachycardia, PoTS, extreme fatigue, and sensitivities to light and sound
• Deteriorating to the point of being bedbound and unable to care for herself
• Reaching a mental health crisis point that became a surprising turning point
• Discovering the concept that Long Covid could be a hypersensitive nervous system stuck in fight-or-flight
• Using brain retraining techniques to gradually rebuild activity levels and trust in her body
• Finding support through group coaching where achievements were celebrated
• Completing the Lightning Process to bridge the final gap to complete recovery
• Returning to full-time work as the milestone that marked complete recovery
• Learning to distinguish between normal tiredness and illness-related symptoms
• Finding a new identity and priorities after recovery, focusing on health and family

If you're struggling with Long Covid, remember that recovery is possible. Jamie's journey shows that understanding your nervous system and taking small, consistent steps forward can lead to healing, even from the most severe symptoms.

For more information about Long Covid Breathing courses & workshops, please check out LongCovidBreathing.com

(music credit - Brock Hewitt, Rule of Life)

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Jamie's Recovery Story
• 3:54 Initial COVID and Declining Health
• 7:06 Rock Bottom and Mental Health Crisis
• 11:38 The Turning Point: Hospital and Hope
• 17:06 Nervous System Understanding and Healing
• 26:06 Return to Work and Life After Recovery
• 37:18 Lessons Learned and Finding New Identity
• 44:20 Gratitude and Final Reflections

Transcript

Jackie Baxter: 0:55

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Long Covid Podcast. I am delighted to be joined today by Jamie, who is going to share her recovery story. So, as you all know, I absolutely love recovery stories, so I'm super excited to hear what worked for you, what didn't work for you. This episode does also contain discussions of dark thoughts and suicidal thoughts, so I just want to make you aware of that. I'll make sure to let you know when it's coming up as well, if you would prefer to avoid that section or if you want to come back to this episode at a different time. So a really warm welcome to the podcast today. It's so lovely to meet you Thanks for having me.

Jamie Waterhouse: 1:45

The podcast was a really big part of my recovery. Listening to stories, especially recovery stories, was really huge for me. I don't actually think I would have gotten through recovery without recovery stories, so thanks.

Jackie Baxter: 2:00

So it's so cool that you're now able to have come all the way through to share your own. Um, I love that so much. It's very surreal. Yeah, I'm sure we'll get into all of this, but I definitely found for months, even like years, I was still pinching myself. Um, I would still be outside and like looking at trees and going a tree, yes, which sounds ridiculous to someone who hasn't had this experience, but to someone like yourself who has, like you, get that.

Jamie Waterhouse: 2:28

I get it, I completely understand. I remember when I started work again and I would have meetings and I would be sitting in a meeting going oh my gosh, I'm in a meeting, I'm in a meeting. Can you believe that I'm in a meeting right now? And it took a while for that to wear off absolutely, um.

Jackie Baxter: 2:44

So let's reverse a little bit and go back to the beginning. So can you say a little bit about yourself and maybe what life was like in the sort of run-up to get sick? Who was Jamie before?

Jamie Waterhouse: 2:58

um, I was actually very COVID cautious before I got COVID, so I was um very much and still am. Um, I wear masks a lot and I was. Everything was about not catching COVID. And then we caught COVID um, and you know, you can't can't escape, it feels like.

Jamie Waterhouse: 3:19

So when I got COVID I went down with it really badly. I felt like I was poisoned. Actually From about day three to day eight I had this feeling of being poisoned, but then I kind of got a little bit better and I went back to work and I kind of did some things, thought that I was getting over it and I crashed and had all the horrific symptoms that you get with long COVID. So I had tachycardia. I had what I later discovered was POTS, so I would get really dizzy when I stood up and really confused when moving around, obviously because I was getting the high heart rate. I started experiencing PEM. So I went to the hospital at one point for the tachycardia and then two days later I absolutely crashed and it felt as if my body was getting pulled in all these directions. It was just like this whole assault on the body. That's how it felt to me. I became really sensitive to light and sound. So I couldn't watch TV, I couldn't listen to music. I wore earplugs and noise cancelling headphones everywhere for a while, you know, and for a while I was just housebound. I was able to go up and down stairs for a bit, but things just gradually got worse and worse and I just had a very steady decline from there. I got so bad that at one point that I was like unable to even get to the toilet because I just had this rolling pen constantly. So it was really bad. My mum had to come and look after me and I actually went and stayed with her for a couple of months to try and get better.

Jamie Waterhouse: 5:19

At the same time, I discovered a protocol that claimed to heal long clock covered, and I became deeply involved with the people that not only created it but were doing the protocol, and it was all about detoxing and killing infections, and we'd said that the reason that we had long COVID was because of infections and mineral imbalances in our bodies, which would be fine, except it was about 50 supplements and every single supplement you would have a reaction to it and then they would say, no, that's just die off, so that's just you having a detox symptom. So I was getting progressively worse. But I was doing this, taking these supplements, and then they would make me even sicker and then I would react to them all. But I was told to keep going and just keep going. It's okay, it's all part of the process. So I was deeply involved with that.

Jamie Waterhouse: 6:28

But it didn't seem to be working and I got worse and worse and worse. And then my mum, who was looking after me, basically cooking all my meals and doing everything for me, turned around and said I can't handle this anymore, it's too much care. You have to go back home. And then she lives about eight hours away from my house and we did the road trip home and I was already in a crash and the exertion of the car trip basically sent me into an even deeper crash and I just got worse and from that point I became completely bed bound. That's when I couldn't even get to the toilet. I was just unable to do anything for myself. It was the most horrific feeling I've ever felt.

Jackie Baxter: 7:24

I think people who haven't had this experience or an experience like this can't quite understand how awful that feels. I mean, physically it's obviously absolutely horrific because you are just feeling so unwell and so utterly exhausted to a point that you have nothing left. But mentally it's also absolutely horrendous in that moment that you've gone from someone who was fine to someone who is too ill for even your mother to care for. Um, you know that that must have been quite a difficult mental place to be as well.

Jamie Waterhouse: 8:15

Yeah, it was absolutely a difficult mental place to be and I was not in a good place basically, and I'm a mum and at my worst I could only spend half an hour a day with my son, and it was just breaking me apart the fact that I couldn't be the mother that I wanted to be. My heart goes out to every parent who can't be there for their kids because they're suffering this. It's just horrific, and that actually is a good segue into what happened next. So trigger warning to anyone listening. So I became so depressed and so upset that I was becoming suicidal. I literally thought that my options were either to do a protocol with horrific side effects or to live with long COVID. I believed those people who said that long COVID is forever and there's nothing that you can do for it. I really believed that at the time and I really wish I hadn't, because it spiralled me into a really deep depression. And then there was a day where my son had a really bad stomach ache and was screaming and had to be taken to hospital and my partner had to take him and I was so distraught at not being able to look after my son that I had a mental breakdown basically, and it was at that point, but I started asking the people around me for knives because I wanted to hurt myself, but I was unable to get up and do anything about it, which is thankful. I'm thankful for now, but at the time it was horrific. So my partner came home from the hospital with our son and then immediately had to call an ambulance for me, who he was worried was having a mental breakdown. This was actually the turning point for me. This was the absolute worst moment. But I was sent to hospital and they actually were quite amazing at hospital I realise I've forgotten a big chunk is I was under the care of a long COVID clinic called Clinic 19 and they were actually amazing at the time and they were prescribing me drugs. I got prescribed I've forgotten the names of them now but drugs for the pots and they didn't really do much for me. And they prescribed me LDN as well, so low-dose naltrexone which I never actually took because I started to get better.

Jamie Waterhouse: 11:09

So the turning point was I was put into the care of the hospital and they were amazing, and there were a couple of things that all happened at the same time that contributed to me getting better. So one was that the creator of that protocol was like zinc is the reason that you can't walk. You need to take zinc, take zinc, take zinc, take zinc. And I was like no, no, no, I'm going to react to it. I'm going to react to it. He's like take zinc because it's going to fix you. And then I took zinc and then I was told that I could be better because of it and miraculously I got up and I went to the toilet and I it sounds miraculous, but what I think was actually happening is that I had such blind faith in this man and his ability to heal me. So I believe that that's what got me moving the hospital.

Jamie Waterhouse: 12:10

Also, because I was having a mental breakdown, they put me on an antipsychotic which is called Olanzapine and that actually seemed to help me in general. It also fixed my sleep, which in my sleep, had been horrible up until that point. I don't recommend I mean, I don't recommend any drugs unless you speak to your doctor, but I don't recommend that it is a treatment, because it's actually a very hard drug to come off off and I'm still dealing with the, the tapering of that drug. But it did help me at the time and I always like to mention it because it was the turning point and there was some other things. So my dad gave me a call and he said I've just spoken to your uncle. He went through exactly the same thing not long COVID, but chronic fatigue syndrome several years before and he's now recovered and his advice is to don't stop moving.

Jamie Waterhouse: 13:14

And I was like well, I've completely stopped moving, that's absolutely what I've done. So I was like, okay, maybe I need to approach this slightly differently, and I'm not saying that everyone out there with PEM should just run out and run a marathon. Don't do that, that's going to be bad for you. But I realised that I had been terrified of movement up until that point and I did need to. If I was ever going to move again, I would have to move again. So the first step to getting movement back is to move.

Jamie Waterhouse: 13:46

Um, and then at the same time, a nurse no, it wasn't a nurse, and when I've shared my story previously, I've said nurse, but it's actually it was a physio. She came in and she said I went through the same thing a couple of years ago. I was crawling around my house and now I'm fully recovered. And so those two stories were the first time that I had heard of anyone recovering, and it completely blew my mind because I, like I said before, believed that there was no way to recover and that once you had long COVID, that it was forever. So that sparked something in me and I thought if they can do it, so can I. And so that was the. It was a literal turning point. It was like a switch went off inside me. I just believed that I could recover At the same time. That's when I discovered recovery stories. So I had these two experiences in my real life and then I discovered them online. They're out there.

Jamie Waterhouse: 14:54

Yeah they're out there. People exist, and that's why I think it's so important to share recovery stories, because it's the hope that they give. I know some people don't like them because they feel like they don't see themselves in them, but for me, I think it saved my life. I think that I was on a track of despair where I could have hurt myself, and recovery stories changed that trajectory, so started walking a little bit. I started just doing very like just going to the toilet from my hospital bed, um, but I was still extremely fragile, um. It was at this point I was listening to the videos of Miguel Buesta, um, who has an outrageously expensive course. That I didn't do, um, but in his videos he talks about how he thinks long.

Jamie Waterhouse: 15:54

Covid is just a hypersensitive nervous system, and so that really clicked with me and it was the first time that I had heard that this illness could present as a nervous system issue. And that's how I felt. I had these horrible adrenaline surges. I was always on edge. I never felt comfortable. My heart rate was up and down, like it. It really spoke to me. So I wrote on my hand this is just a sense, a hypersensitive nervous system, and whenever I felt worried. I would look at my hand and read this is just a hypersensitive nervous system and it worked like I. Like I found that the the shift from from where I was to thinking of it was just a nervous system issue really helped and I seem to be getting slightly better. And that was at this point that I discovered brain retraining. Now I know brain retraining is quite controversial for some people, but it really did help me.

Jamie Waterhouse: 17:05

So I got out of hospital. I was there for three weeks and I signed up for Primal Trust and I would listen to the lessons from my bed and they say you actually have to do them standing up. But I was not confident in my ability to stand at that point, so I would just do the exercises in bed. And they had this one where you would envision light going from the top of your head right through your body. So I was like, okay, we're going to expand a little bit. I'm going to, because my uncle said don't stop moving. So I'm going to move a little bit.

Jamie Waterhouse: 17:45

So I did a little bit extra, so I would walk just a little bit further and then, as I was doing it, I would imagine light going from the top of my head down through my body, through the ground and I actually wonder if it's a bit of a grounding exercise as well and then symptoms would increase a little bit, which you would expect, and I would just go it's okay, you're safe, it's just a hypersensitive nervous system, you're okay. And then I would continue on. And I kept doing that, little bit by little bit, and I started walking. I went we were house sitting actually, and we're house sitting, my mother-in-law's place, and I would go just to the road outside and then I would go get a coffee and then I would walk to the beach and it was just miraculous.

Jamie Waterhouse: 19:18

Every day I was doing a little bit extra and just telling myself you're safe, you're okay, this is just a hypersensitive nervous system, imagining the light going through my body and it worked. And I can't believe that it worked. And if it was anyone else, I don't know if I'd believe it, but I didn't.

Jackie Baxter: 19:41

I wasn't experiencing PEM and it just was so miraculous, like isn't it amazing when we find something and it does seem miraculous, doesn't it? It almost seems impossible and you sort of like you don't believe it. Or you mean, you obviously do believe it because it's literally happening, but it's like, well, you know, it might be happening now, but it's all going to fall apart in a minute. And then, the more you do it, the more you do it, the more you do it, you're reinforcing it, and then you start to build that little bit of confidence. And then, from that confidence, you start to build that little bit of trust in your body. From that confidence, you start to build that little bit of trust in your body.

Jackie Baxter: 20:18

And I think you know what you've just kind of described that kind of finding that kind of first thing, seeing that little bit of improvement. If I can improve a little bit, I can improve more. Oh, there's other people who have got better. So then you've also got those recovery stories coming in, reinforcing that. You've found a bit of an explanation that describes what's going on in your body. Oh, okay, this is what's going on. Well, now I know what's going on, I can do something about it. And here's this tool that is actually helping me to do something about it.

Jackie Baxter: 20:53

And when you have that kind of understanding, that inspiration and even just one tool, it's a little bit less scary when it happens because, as you say, those symptoms do keep coming back, they do fluctuate, you do feel fatigued. It doesn't just all magically go away overnight. But when it does happen it's that little bit less terrifying because you understand, you've got that inspiration and you've got something that you can do about it and even though it doesn't work every time, you know, because it would never be that simple, would it? But it's such an incredible thing to happen when you find whatever that is. You know, for me it was breathing, for you, it was this, this strategy. Finding that thing, I think is amazing.

Jamie Waterhouse: 21:39

And then that kind of leads the way to everything else, I guess and it took quite a few months to have that trust in my body again. I would say it took over a year actually to have trust in my body again. But all I knew was that these miraculous things were happening to me and I remember I was wearing earplugs and the noise cancelling headphones everywhere and I found this method. I had the tools and I went OK, I am just going to take it off, and it's just a hypersensitive nervous system. I'm going to take it off and it's just a hypersensitive nervous system. I'm going to be okay. And I took the headphones off and I went and I bought a coffee and I didn't need them ever again. Like to just be around my family without like buffering myself from them was so amazing. Myself from them was so amazing.

Jamie Waterhouse: 22:44

It was at this point I joined like a group coaching called the Healing Dudes and that was really awesome. They kind of put you in a group chat with other people who are getting better. You focus just on what you can achieve and what you do, rather than symptom talk or or concentrating on what's going wrong. So it's all positive based. And then they do group coaching calls and for me at that point it is exactly what I needed. Um, because I was still really scared to do stuff. So I had been building like we were talking about this trust, but I was scared that if I went too far or did too much, that I would crash again and it would all come tumbling down. So this I would be like, okay, I'm going to drive, I'm going to just drive around the block and I'm just going to do that. And so then I would go to the group and be like I've just driven today for the first time since becoming unwell, and then everyone would get really excited. Um, and then I went, you know, I would do one more thing and I would go to the shops and then that's, you know, that's huge because there's bright lights and it's all loud and um, and then I did that and I'd tell the group I went to the shop for the first time since being unwell and they'd celebrate. So it was really amazing.

Jamie Waterhouse: 24:04

For about two months I did that and it was really helpful to just have that support. And then after that I got to about 90%. I still had the daily kind of fatigue, but everything else had melted away and I actually decided to do the lightning process. So lightning process is a brain retraining course done over three days and it's quite controversial, but I really did enjoy it. I found the primal trust was a little bit confusing. The brain retraining method was quite long and convoluted and I just found with the lightning process it was quite easy to understand, straightforward to do, so I really loved it. I don't usually recommend it to people because it's quite expensive. I was in a very lucky position. My dad decided to pay for it and what I did was because I had general fatigue. I would do the brain retraining exercise, I would cap the day with it, so start the day and end the day, and then I would do it every time I went to the toilet in between and.

Jamie Waterhouse: 25:20

So it sounds silly, but I would go to the toilet, wash my hands and then do my brain retraining exercise and I just kept doing it over and over again and gradually. I don't know if at that stage I would have gotten better anyway, but it's what I kind of needed to push me from the 90% to the 100%. And I was doing better. But I was like, when do I declare myself fully healed? And I didn't really know when and I decided it was when I started work again. So I got a job, I was so nervous about it. I started and I was able to handle it and that to me was the stake in the ground, saying no, I'm fully healed. And this is how I got there.

Jackie Baxter: 26:15

I want to talk more about that in a second. But you mentioned the lightning process and it is controversial. You know a lot of people are very kind of like this is the best thing ever and then there's a lot of people who say it is incredibly harmful. And I suspect the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. But the few people you know that I have spoken to who have said that it was instrumental in their recovery are all people that did kind of do it at that kind of 90% mark and it was the kind of the thing that helped them kind of over the finish line. And I would be really curious just to hear from you as someone who has done it and who found it helpful do you think it was the most helpful at that point when you'd done a lot of the work, you were feeling pretty good and it kind of helps you over the end, because a three-day sounds quite intensive for someone who's incredibly unwell. Is it something that might have been less helpful earlier on?

Jamie Waterhouse: 27:14

I don't know if you've got any thoughts on that yeah, I don't know if I could have done it early on because of the three days, though I have spoken to people who say that they did it when they were that sick and they were able to handle it. So it's a hard one to answer. I think some people do really well with it and some people don't, and I don't know the reason why. But I'm glad I did it when I did because I was able to take it in. I think what was most helpful was the theory behind it, the fact that this illness is, well, my presentation of this illness, I should say, is my nervous system getting stuck in a state of fight or flight, so my body basically I'm trying to do something like go to the toilet or get downstairs to make a meal. My body thinks that it's facing a tiger, so it just sends all these stress signals into my body, and that theory is what I think helped me the most, so that possibly could have helped me earlier on as well.

Jackie Baxter: 28:25

Just I'm just kind of curious because I think you know, brain retraining in general tends to get a bad rep, because I think a lot of people and I think mistakenly think that the brain bit means that it's all in your head and it's this idea that our nervous system is our entire body you know, it may start in our brain, because that's where all of our processing stuff is, that's, that's like the switchboard but our nervous system.

Jackie Baxter: 29:03

You know, there is no part of our body that our nervous system doesn't interact with, which is why, when this dysfunctional nervous system comes along, it can cause this wide array of symptoms, you know, from heart rate and fast breathing, digestion, to the sort of more weird and wonderful symptoms that people can have as well. Um, you know, immune dysregulation, clotting all of this is affected by our nervous system. So it's not in your head, it's entirely in your body. So, I mean, maybe it's the labeling around it, that's the problem, I don't know. Um, but yeah, I mean for me having that understanding, understanding that it wasn't a million things wrong with me, it was actually one thing that was wrong. It was causing a million different things, but actually there was that root at the heart of it and actually all of the things I needed to do were targeting that, because that would then kind of reach out to all the other things. And it's not a quick fix. It takes time. So, as you well know, as everyone listening knows, you know you might feel big shifts here and there, but they are the sort of you know, combination of all the little steps that you've made up to that point. But, yeah, certainly for me that kind of understanding, because once I understood, then I could start to put together a plan. I mean the brain retraining, whatever you want to call it, whichever particular approach you take, whether it's breathing or whether it's lightning process, it's finding what works for you, isn't it?

Jackie Baxter: 31:03

I think, is what's so important, and that's why, as you say, these recovery stories are so important, because everyone is different. Someone will be listening to your story and being going oh my goodness, I could be her Like. Her story really resonates with me, whereas someone else could be listening and going. Well, this is great. I'm really happy for her. I feel inspired that she's recovered, but her journey is nothing like mine and it's still helpful to hear these things because it is still inspiring, it is still ideas, but different people's stories will resonate differently, um, so that's that's why it's important to hear loads, yes, um so anyway, coming back to your kind of like going back to work, you know when I can do that, then I can say that I'm fully recovered. You got a job, you went back to work and the rest, as they say, is history. Yes, but you know it's not that simple, is it? How did that kind of look for you? How did you kind of move into that job and that I'm recovered moment what did that kind of look like?

Jamie Waterhouse: 32:12

I was an all or nothing kind of person with this, because I did my work when I first got sick, made me redundant at week eight, which I'm pretty sure is legal but I was too sick to do anything about it, especially because I'd gotten a job promotion two weeks before I got sick. So, but it is what it is. So I didn't have a job where I could go back in, like you know, do a little bit in the morning and see how I feel. I went back to full time four days a week in the morning and see how I feel. I went back to full time four days a week. So the other day I spend with my son, so that's full time to me, because that's not a break.

Jamie Waterhouse: 32:57

And I just started and pretended that everything was fine, which is not necessarily the approach that I recommend to everyone, but I kind of had to, uh, and it was kind of good because it got me out of my head and so at that point everything had been about recovery and suddenly I was opening my life up to being normality, to to having a life again and, um, having these everyday conversations with people where I have to just pretend everything's normal was actually really helpful. The only thing is I started telling people that what had happened to me a couple of months in because I was masking at work and I explained this is why I decided to mask at work, because of what had happened to me.

Jackie Baxter: 33:54

so, yeah, and did you find that talking about your experience you know, a couple of months on, it's not very much distance, is it from such an awful experience? Yeah, did you find that talking about it was actually helpful and cathartic, or was it kind of re-traumatising and unhelpful Cathartic?

Jamie Waterhouse: 34:16

definitely, because in those conversations you don't get down to the nitty-gritty. You don't say I was peeing in a bucket next to the bed. You keep that kind of nitty-gritty stuff to yourself. The bed, you keep that kind of nitty-gritty stuff to yourself. But just having people kind of understand and I would explain how I like, how I recovered, and they would get it and they'd go, that actually makes a lot of sense. Like that you, it's your nervous system, and that you were like calming it down, like people really understood it and get it, which is was really nice to have as well.

Jackie Baxter: 34:55

I think most of the world has a dysfunctional nervous system.

Jackie Baxter: 34:58

To be honest, um, you know, I think 80% of the world has probably got a dysfunctional nervous system, maybe not as dysfunctional as as yours was and as mine was, yeah, but like, I think, like, genuinely, these things, these tools that we learn in recovery, are what make us healthier as a result, and I think they are tools that everyone in the world should learn. Yeah, because the more regulated everyone's nervous system is, the better place the world is going to be for everyone. And it's like, if they're the way that they can relate to your experience, as you said, you know, like, oh, that makes total sense. It actually is. It's quite validating for you, I think, as well. But it also starts to help other people to maybe think about their health and how maybe if they're slightly healthier, then they're less likely for something like this to then happen to them. So it's this kind of like passing it on kind of thing, but in a way that sometimes your experience can have a good impact on somebody else possibly, you know, without being like evangelical about it.

Jamie Waterhouse: 36:01

It's funny because now I look back I see that I had a dysregulated nervous system for a long time because I thought I would be like I just have anxiety, that's just me. But I don't actually think that I just had anxiety. I think that it was my nervous system speaking to me and that I actually needed to feel that safety even before I got sick. So you asked how it was before I got sick. I think I was having not full symptoms, but I was. There were whispers there of the illness before I got sick and I think that is so common.

Jackie Baxter: 36:40

There's always something there, and I think you know that comes back to this kind of like recovery. Perfection, isn't it? You know, I definitely noticed, as I was getting closer to the finish line, my perfectionism was really coming in. And it was like you know, in order to be recovered, I have to be a hundred percent perfect. And then it was like, but no one's a hundred percent perfect, it doesn't mean they're not healthy, but no one's a hundred percent perfect. And then I was able to kind of let go of that and be okay, okay, right, I just want to be healthy.

Jamie Waterhouse: 37:10

I can do that and I think sometimes you might have things pop up that might you might over analyze those symptoms. So if I ever have fatigue or tiredness, I'm like, oh, is it beginning again? And realizing that that's part of the illness, to be over analyzing your health and to be worrying about it in that stage, which is natural, because what else do you do when your health goes down the toilet?

Jackie Baxter: 37:38

exactly, whereas actually being tired when you've had a rubbish night's sleep and you've got a sick child and you're also working four days a week, like that's completely normal. I mean, you know, being in bed for three weeks as a result of having a bad a week, like that's completely normal. I mean, you know, being in bed for three weeks as a result of having a bad night's sleep, that's not normal. Um, and you know, one of the questions that I would keep asking myself at this stage was is this normal? Is this normal? Is this normal? And actually, a lot of the time, as time went on, it was yes, this is a normal reaction. I just walked further than I have walked in years. It's's totally normal that I will feel tired. That doesn't mean that it's like fatigue, tired and I've crashed. It just means that my legs hurt and it was this kind of like moving through that stage. Is this normal, is this normal? So you know, it's amazing how everyone approaches this slightly differently.

Jamie Waterhouse: 38:31

Everyone approaches this slightly differently, um, but you know.

Jackie Baxter: 38:32

The end result is you got there, which is amazing, so I would love to just know what advice you might give yourself. So you're now across the finish line, you're living your life, you've really recovered. What would Jamie of where things were really shitty? What would she have wanted to know?

Jamie Waterhouse: 38:51

I mean, the first thing that I think of is you're going to be okay. I think I was so terrified of what was happening to me that I just spiraled. And if I had someone just say you're going to be okay, and I think people around me thought that I was just having some sort of mental breakdown, so they didn't know how to take it, and I just wish I'd known that earlier, that people are recovering and that I would be one of them. I can't believe that I get to say that yes, it is quite overwhelming almost.

Jackie Baxter: 39:39

And you know, I one of the things that I found really hard was finding my place in the world once I had recovered, because I didn't belong with the sick people anymore because I wasn't sick.

Jackie Baxter: 39:53

You know, I had a lot of friends who were still unwell and I still wanted to be friends with them, but I didn't belong in that circle. In the same way, I wasn't one of them, but I also felt like I didn't belong in the real world because everyone else had not had this experience that I had had. It was all very new, quite raw, and I was a new person, you know, coming into this new world because the world had moved on in the three years that I was sick, a lot of things had changed and I just I found it very overwhelming to kind of try to work out who I was, and you know I just took time to do that, which was really helpful, um, but I don't know if you found this as well, where you know you are a different person in a new world, and how did you find your place in that world?

Jamie Waterhouse: 40:41

again, it changed me in a way that I cannot even describe. I don't necessarily. I don't know if I can be one of those people that can say, oh, I'm better for it. I you know it was horrific, but I just took my time and said what do I want my life to look like now? What matters to me now? And because after going through something like that, what matters to you changes and what matters is my health and my family, and that's what I focus on and that's what's important and that comes out in. So at work I don't get so caught up in the day-to-day kind of worries of my job. I just I get the job done and I do it and then, once the day's done, I'm done, I go home to my family and that's what's important, and so I think I have a healthier like approach to things now because of that.

Jackie Baxter: 41:51

I think you know it, it's not something we would ever have chosen and we certainly wouldn't wish it on anyone, let alone someone that you care about. But even your worst enemy you wouldn't wish this on. But, as you say, it is this opportunity to really build the life that you want and to focus on what is genuinely the most important to you. And I think most people come to that same realization that, having experienced what it feels like to lose your health, that your health really is one of the most important things that you can have and it is worth treasuring and it is worth maintaining and making that effort to be as healthy as you can, because you know money can't buy it.

Jamie Waterhouse: 42:36

Yeah, and that looks like to me doing Pilates and doing personal training and yoga and doing all those things that make me feel better, and it's what a privilege to be able to do that again.

Jackie Baxter: 42:51

Absolutely, jamie. Thank you so much for coming along, for bearing your soul, for sharing your story. I think it's so helpful for people to hear that you have recovered and some of the things that helped you, so thank you so much. Um, I'm so pleased that you are able to do these things again. Um, it always makes me smile to hear everyone's recovery stories, so thank you so much thanks for having me.