“Over the past few years, it’s been a lot of work to get access to the healthcare I need, sometimes spending years on waiting lists for clinics. I feel like the pandemic has made accessing the healthcare I need almost impossible. I have no idea when I’ll get back to where I was pre-pandemic,” she tells me.

For Ellen, she regularly has dislocations and injuries due to EDS. She’d constantly seize up so she found a physiotherapy appointment to ease the pain. In May, this was changed to a phone appointment – but the call never came. Instead, she was copied into a letter to her GP informing them she’d get a new appointment when clinics reopen.

After months of asking doctors to take her suspected endometriosis pain seriously, she underwent an ultrasound where they found irregularities. But doctors told her it would likely be some time before this can properly be investigated again. “Each month I’m in tears from the pain,” Ellen explains.

Ruby Rouson had appointments for colonoscopy, laparoscopy and gallbladder surgery, and an ultrasound scan on her underarm but due to lockdown, they have all been cancelled.

“The colonoscopy has taken two to three years of fighting and I’ve not heard anything about rebooking it yet.” She told me. A running theme in this piece, Ruby also struggled to get help with her reproductive health. The appointment to remove her Nexplanon contraceptive implant in March was on the day the surgery the lockdown commenced. It took five months of begging and panicked late-night emails to get it removed.

“As a disabled person, my healthcare has been forgotten in the pandemic”