Paris (AFP)

"They are waves": first of all a great tiredness, aches and, often, difficulty in breathing. Then, nothing, before the symptoms return. Reclusive at home, French patients with Covid-19 describe to AFP a disease "unlike any other".

Esther Boissière remembers very well the day when the virus knocked on her door. "It was March 12. We bought beers with my partner to watch the speech" televised by French President Emmanuel Macron, said the 45-year-old teacher.

The teacher will quickly become disillusioned. The nights are linked, she often wakes up "drenched", coughs a lot. The situation worsens on March 20, "my birthday". "Not good at all", the 40-something feels "tightness in the head and rib cage".

Breathing becomes "very complicated", its tension drops to "10". "I was really afraid of dying," she says. The firefighters move but his case is not serious enough to require hospitalization. His arrest is extended.

"The hardest part is never knowing when it's going to get better. It comes in waves, it's a funny effect," she explains. She begins to "see the end of the tunnel" but is always afraid of "going back" and worries about "having consequences", in particular of the lung lesions.

Claire, 28 years old and resident of Lille (north), also hopes that "the worst is behind" her. When the doctor's diagnosis fell, she was "shocked". Given her age, she expected "smaller symptoms".

Today, at "D + 12", she says she heals "with 2% every day", has "no more pain in the lungs" but still "aches and a runny nose". "It's super long, it leaves, it comes back, it looks like nothing and everything at the same time," she summarizes.

- "Russian roulette" -

The isolation at home of these patients, even if their cases are not the most serious, often generates a lot of anxiety.

"Sometimes I said to myself: + I'm fine, but if I can't breathe in the middle of the night, I start to suffocate, how is it going? +", Explains Vasken Pekmezian, 37, who experienced a total loss of taste. and smell, other characteristic symptoms.

Like all patients interviewed by AFP, he regrets not having been tested. "I contaminated my pregnant wife," he pleads. Transmission of the virus to the fetus has not been established by doctors. "At the same time, they recognize that we have no perspective," he said.

"Psychologically it is the difficulty of not breathing anymore" which also worried Florian Lenglet, 30 years old. "We do not want to be alone in the hospital" or "abuse the 15" - the emergency number - at the expense of a more serious case, but "we constantly wonder if we do not start in danger ", explains this gas station manager near Versailles in the Paris suburbs.

He too is exhausted by the comings and goings of the symptoms: "one day, I overflow with energy, the next day I am flat, it is a sawtooth disease which is like no other".

"The psychological aspect is very complicated to manage. It is not like a bad flu. There, we know that it is fatal," recognizes Christian Quest, 45, who has been cured for three days. "There is a Russian roulette side, estimates this parliamentary collaborator. But, according to the age and the co-morbidities, there are more or less bullets in the barrel. It is stressful".

© 2020 AFP