Brenda Eadie, who is almost 45, was one of the first people to contract Covid-19 in March 2020 while working at a Glasgow hospital. She has shared her story today on the second anniversary of the first positive case of coronavirus in Scotland.

Now, Brenda is facing the prospect of early retirement from the NHS due to the impact the condition has had on her.

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She said: “I might never be able to safely nurse again which means the end of my career, from catching Covid at work.

The dedicated charge nurse has worked in the NHS for almost 30 years. Brenda said: “It was never just a job for me. Since I was a wee girl I had always wanted to be a nurse. As soon as I turned 17, I got my first auxiliary job.”

Brenda has been campaigning for better pay and conditions in the health service with colleagues from NHS Workers United for Scotland

"The hospitals looked like a warzone"

She was on the frontline as Covid ravaged Glasgow’s hospitals and said they looked like “warzones”. Brenda added:”I had the first variant from Wuhan. It was all a bit mental. Nobody knew what they were doing. The hospitals looked like a warzone because of all the tarpaulin. We didn’t know what was coming through the doors it was always just learning and panicking. It was pretty horrible, to be honest.”

It wasn’t long before Brenda eventually caught Covid and developed complications, due to her asthma. Brenda said: “It started with a headache and a cough. Within 24 hours I was struggling to breathe. Within two to three days I was in hospital, I was on oxygen for another couple of days. At that point, testing wasn’t quite up to scratch because it was five days before lockdown.

“When my oxygen levels were okay, I got sent home and I got a nebuliser machine with saline.

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“I lost about four weeks of my life at home. I’ve got no clue what I was doing. My daughter said I would just get up and wander about and I would sleep a lot. I developed quite a bad chest because of my asthma.”

"My brain was going into overload"

After a period of recuperation, Brenda headed back to work in August 2020 but soon found herself ill with stress again. She said: ”I went back to work in August 2020 and within three to four weeks: brain fog hit, long Covid hit. I couldn’t cope with my tasks and when people were asking me to do things, my brain was going into overload and I was bursting into tears.”

Brenda has been working with test and protect since but over the last month or two, has noticed more ailments creeping in. She said: ”The last month or two has been even worse with all of these other ailments. I’m now anaemic, I have an underactive thyroid and I developed a stutter.

“I’ve been getting lost on buses. I was on a bus going to get my sick line and something in my head must have went. All of a sudden I was like: ‘Why am I on this bus? What have I been doing?’ So I got off the bus to get my bearings.

“That might sound funny and at the beginning it kind of did to me, but as the days are going on if there are four people having a conversation: I can’t deal with it. Just at the drop of a hat, my brain feels like it has been re-wired. So I’m getting tested for something called functional neurological disorder.

“I feel sometimes like my life is over.”

Now, she has been focusing her energy on fighting for improved conditions and pay with the campaign NHS Workers United for Scotland as well as calling for more support for people with long Covid. Brenda added: ”There’s thousands of workers like me in the NHS. I’m not the only worker who is down. Understaffing in the NHS is a vicious circle.”

“The government need to do more because this is real. It’s life-limiting. You can’t do all of the things that you would normally just go and do. You have to think about everything meticulously. It takes me about two hours for me to get ready to go out. The government need to do more for the NHS and people who are suffering from long Covid.”

Brenda is not alone. Figures from the Office of National Statistics showed that 100,000 people across the UK are suffering with long-covid as researchers look into underlying symptoms such as memory loss and brain fog. There is no diagnostic test for long covid, no treatment, and no scientific consensus on what causes it.