Golf champ and long-hauler calls on unvaccinated to “get poked”

Kathy Ziglo has a message for COVID-19 doubters and for those who remain unvaccinated.

“Getting COVID-19 is not the way you want to learn about the disease,” says the COVID survivor and two-time Saskatchewan amateur women’s golf champion.

“If you can get vaccinated and it takes away some of the severe things that can happen, take the opportunity. I wouldn’t want anyone else to have to deal with it. Just protect yourselves.”

Life as Ziglo knew it pre-COVID-19 has changed drastically. It’s only now Ziglo is grasping how close to death the disease brought her, and how much further she needs to go before she feels more like her former self.

Ziglo, who is in charge of new home construction for Reliance Greggs Saskatoon, began to develop symptoms of the virus in November 2020. She believes she got COVID-19 from her partner, Patty Hersikorn, who had attended a small curling bonspiel in late October, prior to vaccines being available in the province.

While Hersikorn had a tickle in her throat and little else, Ziglo’s experience was at the other end of the spectrum. It started with gastrointestinal issues, progressed to a 14-day stay in St. Paul’s Hospital where she was told to inform her family of her final wishes, resulted in three months of home recuperation and continues to this day with a whole range of symptoms.

Ziglo said her memory and concentration have taken a hit. When she was first discharged, “every time I turned around I forgot things. Common words, people’s names would be gone. Patty said it was like playing charades [to understand what she was talking about].”

When she returned to work in March, she’d carry a notebook to keep track of her thoughts. While this is no longer necessary, she said she still needs to follow up on requests immediately or risk forgetting to follow up altogether.

She continues to work on her strength and stamina. Admittedly, she did not spend the summer in the gym but rather enjoying life, and will start to focus on strength training this fall.

“I’m normally an active person – I play badminton, pickle ball, walk the dogs,” she said.

To date, she has yet to recover her strength and, although can walk long distances, if presented with any incline, she is winded immediately.

Where she could once easily carry 30 pounds, anything more than 15 pounds now winds her.

She no longer enjoys sitting around a fire because the smoke causes her lungs to hurt, and she can no longer ignore air quality warnings.

She’s more easily frustrated, a fact she blames on enduring fatigue.

With the support of her employer, she’s adjusted her work hours to accommodate her need for more sleep. She now goes to work at 9 a.m., instead of 8 a.m., and generally spends an entire day on the weekend in bed.

Known as a golf firebrand in her younger days, she still enjoys a round of golf but COVID has taken a few yards off her drive.  “From one round to the next, I can see large differences in how far I can hit the golf ball – it is not uncommon to be a three club difference from day to day.”

Curling is a no-go until at least January 2022 and maybe longer as she simply cannot handle the exertion of sweeping.

“Your brain and body take a shit-kicking,” she said.

Ziglo said she’s begun to talk to a counsellor to help her process what’s happened to her. She’s also seeing a chiropractor, and receiving acupuncture and massage because her whole body aches.

“I need people to know that just because a person looks okay, we’re fighting a lot you don’t know about. I don’t feel bad for myself – things happen. But when I have good friends say they wish they would get COVID to build immunity, I don’t understand their thinking. This is not just a flu. When you see people hospitalized and dying, and there is a remedy available that has proven to protect us, why wouldn’t you go get the poke? You need to get vaccinated.”