Make Visible: ME/CFS, Long Covid, POTS, EDS, Fibro & MCAS Explored20 Feb

#28 From Olympic hopeful to Long Covid: Oonagh Cousins’ story

STORIES: Oonagh Cousins - Olympic Hopeful to Long Covid Advocate

When professional rower Oonagh Cousins was pre-selected for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, her dream was within reach. But when COVID-19 swept through the British rowing team, Oonagh didn’t recover like most others. Instead, she developed Long Covid, post-exertional malaise (PEM), and dysautonomia, forcing her from peak performance into chronic illness.

In this Olympic special episode, Oonagh joins Emily Kate Stephens and Gez Medinger to share her deeply personal story: from elite athlete and Olympic selection to Long Covid and ME/CFS advocate.

After university, Oonagh committed fully to professional rowing, training relentlessly, sacrificing socially, and pushing her body to its limits to represent Great Britain. But the very mindset that made her an Olympic contender — resilience, discipline, pushing through — ultimately pushed her into Long Covid.

As fatigue, brain fog and post-exertional malaise took hold, Oonagh was forced to confront the physical and emotional cost of training to be an elite athlete.

In this episode we explore:

Long Covid in elite athletes
Post-exertional malaise (PEM) and overtraining
Why “pushing through” can worsen chronic illness
The psychological impact of losing an Olympic dream
Dysautonomia and recovery after COVID-19
The grief cycle of chronic illness
The advocacy gap in Long Covid and ME/CFS
Finding renewed purpose beyond elite sport

Oonagh now works in Long Covid and ME/CFS advocacy, supporting patients through Long Covid Support and #ThereForME. She has contributed to scientific research, including Creating a Social Science Research Agenda for Long Covid, and is Comms and Policy Lead at Visible Health, bringing her lived experience to help build empathetic, patient-centered tools for living well with chronic illness.

Make Visible

@visible.health

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(41)

#40 Symptom connections in ME/CFS, Long Covid, EDS & Fibromyalgia - Orthostatic Intolerance, pain, PEM & MCAS

REVIEW: with Nancy Klimas, Peter Rowe, Lucinda Bateman, Todd Davenport & Theoharis Theoharides For decades, people living with ME/CFS, Long Covid, fibromyalgia, EDS and other complex chronic illnesses...

7 Aug 1h 4min

#39 ME/CFS & EDS bedbound for 8 years - Learning to Live Again with Lizzie and Amy Mooney

STORIES: ME/CFS and EDS left Lizzie bedbound for eight years - a mother's fight for answers and a daughter's fight to reclaim independence. Lizzie Mooney became chronically sick with ME/CFS and Ehlers...

24 Jul 52min

#38 Pacing is Power - POTS, PEM, EDS & MCAS strategies with Dr Clayton Powers

STRATEGIES: Physical therapy tools to reduce crashes and improve quality of life for POTS, Post-Exertional Malaise (PEM), EDS, MCAS, and infection-associated chronic conditions such as ME/CFS and Long...

10 Jul 59min

#37 ME/CFS breakthroughs: are treatments getting closer? With Action For ME, NIH, CODA, Bateman Horne Center &

SCIENCE: Are ME/CFS research breakthroughs finally helping us understand the disease and move closer to treatments? ME/CFS has been underfunded and under-researched for decades. Despite the scale and...

26 Jun 59min

#36 My daughter’s Long Covid changed how I practice medicine with Dr Binita Kane

STORIES: What do you do when your medical training has no answers for your own child? This is the question that Dr Binita Kane found herself facing in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. As a Cons...

13 Jun 58min

#35 Vagus nerve stimulation for chronic illness and better health with Dr Elisabetta Burchi

SCIENCE: What if a small, non-invasive device could help regulate your nervous system, reduce inflammation, improve cognitive function, and support recovery from chronic illness? Dr Elisabetta Burchi,...

29 Mai 1h 1min

#34 Fibromyalgia and chronic pain management with Ryan Bourdo, Physical Therapist

STRATEGIES: Physical rehabilitation for chronic pain conditions. If you live with fibromyalgia, ME/CFS, EDS or chronic pain, you've likely heard that exercise may help. You've also probably learned, t...

15 Mai 55min

#33 Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS) undiagnosed for 23 years with Dr Lucy Foulkes

STORIES: Undiagnosed Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS) | Chronic Pain, Diagnosis & Living with Complex Chronic Illness For 23 years, Dr Lucy Foulkes has lived with chronic pain, migraines, end...

1 Mai 1h 13min