About

In December 2022, I had a fairly ordinary respiratory infection. Cold, cough, fever, the usual. I recovered within a couple of weeks. About ten days after I felt better, a headache arrived on the right side of my forehead and didn't leave. It's still there now, every day, over three years later.

For most of 2023 and 2024, the headache was the main problem. I saw my GP, had blood tests, an MRI, an eye test. I started taking amitriptyline. The MRI was normal. I saw a headache charity specialist, who diagnosed likely new daily persistent headache with migrainous features. The headache settled to a manageable background hum, typically 1–2 out of 10, with occasional worse episodes. I could work, exercise, and live more or less normally, though I wasn't at my former full health. My partner and I had both noticed my heart rate seemed higher than it used to be as well.

In April 2025, things changed sharply. After a game of badminton and a social evening, I crashed. Not gradually, not subtly, but a discrete, sudden deterioration. Fatigue became the dominant symptom. Breathlessness too. Exercise tolerance collapsed. Work became extremely difficult. The headache was still there, but it was no longer the sole thing limiting my life.

I had a brief improvement in late September 2025 lasting about three weeks, during which fatigue and breathlessness noticeably eased. I don't know why. Then in October 2025, I crashed again after what I suspect was cumulative overexertion, and I haven't recovered to that improved state since.

That's where I am now. I'm in my mid-thirties, previously fit and healthy with no prior conditions. I work full-time in a research role, though sustaining that is currently a serious struggle. My resting heart rate has risen from the low 60s to the low-mid 80s. My heart rate variability is severely reduced for my age. I get breathless getting dressed. A slow 30-minute walk is about my comfortable limit, and I need extended rest afterwards. I experience post-exertional malaise: a delayed worsening of symptoms, typically 6–8 hours after exertion, with prolonged recovery.

I don't have a formal diagnosis for the fatigue, breathlessness, and autonomic symptoms. I'm currently being seen by a post-COVID rehabilitation service and NHS respiratory medicine, and I'm on a waiting list for NHS neurology. My own reading of the evidence and my clinical picture suggests a post-viral syndrome with overlapping components: autonomic dysfunction (possibly meeting or approaching the criteria for POTS), ME/CFS-pattern fatigue with post-exertional malaise, possible breathing pattern disorder, and the pre-existing new daily persistent headache.

Why this site

When I first started trying to understand what was happening to me, it was quite hard to navigate everything out there. I found plenty of anecdotes, plenty of forum posts, and not a lot in the way of careful, first-person accounts that took the evidence seriously. I wanted to create the resource I was looking for: dispassionate, data-aware, honest about what's uncertain.

I write about specific interventions I'm trying, always with a description of the evidence, an account of my own experience, and data where I have it. I write evidence reviews of the research behind things people with post-viral conditions commonly encounter. I've built interactive versions of clinical questionnaires that can be hard to find online. And I write about navigating the NHS, which presents its own particular challenges when you have a condition that doesn't fit neatly into a single pathway.

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What this site is not

This is not medical advice. Nothing here should be taken as a recommendation to try anything. I'm one person describing one experience of one condition. What applies to me may not apply to you, and any changes to treatment or management should be discussed with a doctor.