SCOTTISH tennis star Maia Lumsden admits she fears for her career because of the ongoing effects of long Covid.
The 24-year-old will make a return to competitive action next week after 18-months on the sidelines due to the virus.
She had a mild case of coronavirus in October 2020 before becoming very unwell several weeks later.
“I was totally bedbound for a number of months,” the Scot said. “The first six months were tough. I had a lot of tests done and everything was fine but they just didn’t know a lot about it.
“There wasn’t any treatment or any medication that I could take. That was the really hard part, just not knowing what was going on and how badly it was affecting my body.
“As the months went on I was obviously desperate to try to get back to tennis so every now and then I would try to start, but it would make me more ill, basically I’d crash and I’d be back bedbound. There was no timeline on when things would get better.”
Lumsden, who reached a career-high ranking of 250 in October 2019, finally made it back onto court a year after testing positive, beginning with 15-minute sessions.
Another bout of Covid in December set her back but thankfully did not have the same long-term effects and next week she will play in the UK Pro League tournament in Warwick.
“I’m not quite ready to compete in professional events but I’m going to try and test it out, see if I can handle it,” she said. “I am really excited because it’s been so long but still a bit hesitant because I know I won’t be 100 per cent. I’m hoping I can manage the remaining symptoms that I have.”
Lumsden added: “A lot of people, especially my age or athletes, they don’t even really know about long Covid.
“That’s one of the tough things, a lot of people don’t understand what I’ve gone through. Even people I know have said to me, ‘Are you sure it’s not in your head’?”
While the Scot may be ready for a tentative return, that is a distant dream at the moment for Tanysha Dissanayake.
The 20-year-old, who was taking her first steps on the professional circuit prior to contracting Covid-19 last July, is barely able to do anything nine months on.
Dissanayake experienced moderate symptoms after testing positive, including struggling to walk any distance without feeling breathless, and told the PA news agency: “It’s basically been downhill ever since.
“For most of this year I’ve been completely bedbound. Just to speak to you today, I didn’t do anything the whole of the morning, didn’t do much yesterday. One of my friends came over the other day. I had to rest for five days after that.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here