We have to stop our dream journey to Australia

You haven't heard from us for quite a while now, and there are reasons for that. We didn't know ourselves what was going on. We are experiencing an unprecedented health and emotional roller coaster for ourselves. This roller coaster has meant that we have now decided to give up and postpone our dream trip to Australia indefinitely.

When we had to pitch our tent in broad daylight on July 11, 2022, in a forest buzzing with mosquitoes because Nicole suddenly became extremely ill, we had no idea what was in store for us. The next day Nicole felt much better again and we were able to continue our journey, but from this point onwards Nicole's and then later Beni's cold symptoms and phases of total exhaustion became more frequent.
Today, a good 5 months later, we know that this was the beginning of our long/post-Covid illness.

We have been suffering from long/post covid for almost half a year now, 3 months of it severe. On our worst days, we could just get out of bed for 5 minutes at most and go for a short walk. The rest of the day we had to lie down. This condition lasted for almost a month.

Our plan was actually to regain our strength in Switzerland and then fly to Australia. Unfortunately, we realized that this was too utopian an idea. Nobody can tell us how long it will be before we are healthy again, let alone able to think about sport.
In the meantime, we are doing quite well, unless we have another relapse. What does that mean? This means that we can cope with everyday life reasonably well, so that outsiders do not see at first glance that we are ill. For this to work, we have to do without a great deal and pay attention to many things. No sports, if possible little stress, a regular daily routine, always enough sleep, no alcohol, little coffee and above all we must listen to our body.

A month ago we started Interval Hypoxia Hyperoxia Training (IHHT) therapy, which was recommended to us thanks to an acquaintance. Her daughter (13 years young and 7 months with Long/Post-Covid) has been helped a lot by this therapy and we also hope a lot from it. The therapy also includes the intake of specific vital substances.
This is what an IHHT session looks like:

Update on IHHT 17.12.2023:
In the meantime (over a year later) we would both say that IHHT didn't help us very much, in some cases it was even too strenuous for the body. As usual with Long Covid, it may help some people very well, but unfortunately not us. For us, the most important thing in our healing process was/is to keep the pulse low and only very slowly feel it up again.
But if you need more information or tips on the subject of Long Covid, please get in touch with us.

IHHT is better known as altitude training, which is used by extreme athletes to prepare for competitions.
If you want to know more about it:
https://fit4life.ch/ihht-2/
The Fit 4 Life center in Station Siggenthal, which is run by Michael Back, is also the place where we do the therapy. We feel very well taken care of there, the super team takes a lot of time for us and our questions. In addition, they already have a lot of experience with Long/Post-Covid patients and Michael has been offering IHHT therapy for 10 years, which was very appealing to us because they don't just take advantage and rip off sick people. The prices are extremely fair!

We made good progress with the therapy until a few days ago when we increased the setting a bit. This was too much for our body and we had another crash that set us back at least 1 week.

We are now trying to get back to "normal" life and hope to find our own apartment again in the new year. Please get in touch with us if you have an apartment tip in the Wettingen/Othmarsingen region. We will register again in Switzerland and Beni will most likely be able to take a part-time job again. This will at least take some of the financial burden off our shoulders. After all, we are not 'only' sick, but we have to cope with a lot of other things on the side. As returned world travelers we fall through all the cracks, since we are not entitled to any payments, such as daily sickness benefits, etc.. And for Nicole, who has to look for a completely new place to work, it is generally not possible to work at the moment and no one hires someone who is not completely healthy and could drop out again at any time due to relapses.
It is not made easy, all therapy costs are not covered by the health insurance anyway, because for Long/Post-Covid no therapies are recognized yet and also much too little research is done. With the vaccination, which unfortunately did not help in our case, there was probably a greater guarantee of income and thus motivation for quick solutions.

Fortunately, we are on the road to recovery and when we do recover, we hope to put all of this tremendous mental and physical strain behind us and appreciate life even more through this experience.

This is the sad end of our blog for now, but don't worry, we won't give up that fast.... we will be back 😃!