He was never in the hospital, never gone in the hospital. So when this happened, it was like a bomb went into his body. This virus is no joke. This one actually almost took me away from my wife and kids. This one almost took my life. Mm hmm. I try not to concentrate on the things that I can't do. Concentrate on more what I can do. I'm not complaining because I could be dead. I called it twice, and I'm thankful for just just being alive. Keith Carter and his wife, Stephanie. I actually met through mutual friends. People in the community, they say, Hey, Christina, you really need to cover the story. This is a man who is well known throughout the community. He does a lot of construction work and he randomly came down with Covid and is having this terrible, long lasting reaction to it. I think you should tell his story. We were We were We were freaked. We were doing a lot of traveling. Healthy, healthy, healthy, energized bunny. Just go, go, go. But here in New Orleans, you know, you would see them out at Jazz Fest. There were hanging out for Marty, you're all going to all the balls. He was traveling all the time. Life for them was, as they told me. Pretty magnificent. Mr. Keith tested positive for Covid early March 2020. He had just gotten back from being out of town for a work trip that he went on. He went to Texas. He wasn't feeling well. And so he are already quarantined himself in his room. I was weak. I had a headache. I had a temperature. People. First. It got so bad that I didn't think I could shake it. And I was trying to call for Steph, but Steph couldn't hear me. But my daughter happened. Nicole at the same time. Thank God for that because she called. Um what I found out later was that I was in the midst of the Stroop. E. M s came, took into the hospital. It just had a ripple effect on him. And keep in mind this was a as his wife described him perfectly healthy man who did not have any prior health conditions. So this definitely caught that family off guard. Everything was acute from kidneys, the lungs, the heart, things that he never had because he he was never in the hospital, never going in the hospital. So when this happened, it was like a bomb went into his body from that covid and a stroke, Um, I had to have dialysis. Um, I couldn't eat, so they put a peg tube in my stomach One day. We got that call in the middle of the night. My daughter got says, like, you know, he's in ICU. His coded. What do you want us to do? And she's like, do whatever you can to possibly saving. And he got to I c u two days later, after that. And he was in a stroke war. So the recovery period started from there, But it was a monster. It was. They told me it wasn't an easy time for him because he was so used to doing everything on his own. He had never been in a hospital before. I see. I'm gonna get up and I'm leaving. And I got up and I fell face down. Wow. You know, and then that helped me to see that what was wrong with me was a little more serious than I thought. You know, the toughest part. You couldn't see your loved ones, right? Like that was really hard. Miss Stephanie wasn't able to hold his hand, not being able to see him not being able to figure out how he was doing, how he's feeling, or to calm him down and ease some of his frustrations that he had when he was first in there. Even when he was released, he wasn't sent home just yet. He had to go right to rehab and start learning the basics while he was there. Brush my teeth. How to clothe myself, my vocal cord. Was they diagnosed as being paralyzed on one side. So I took a surgery. At the time we had told so many stories of those who had beaten Covid, and that was it. It was just that they survived, and we'd also shared stories at the time of those who sadly, did not survive with Mr Keith story. It was. He beat it, but he's learning how to live all over again. And in an instant like that, his entire life changed and then he was finally able to come home. That was his welcome home, Mr Keith Drive by parade celebration that they had. He sat outside. He had his balloons. He got to see a lot of his family members, many of whom he hadn't seen a month. Man, that was amazing. My daughter. I was laying in the bed inside and my daughter, Let's say, Come on, let's go outside. It's nice and sunny in the stroll. Let's go take a strong And then when she strolled me out, the street was full. All of my friends and family, uh, he was so touching, man, What I was able to see was all the people that have been praying for me. Miss Stephanie actually reached out to me first about his update. She sent me videos and said, Look, he's walking by himself and I was like, Oh, my gosh, look at him Go. Yes, yes, yes. It was a complete 1 80 to see him the first time last summer, up until now, with his his spirit, as well as just his attitude and his physical growth, because the first time I talked to him, he was just himself almost defeated at the fact that this happened to him and his family. It wasn't just Mr Keith it was Stephanie to who had to change her whole life around and become a caretaker for him. You can't carry all this burden on your own or you get depressed. You give up. I mean, she's an excellent caregiver, and I think I think I have for having her as a wife watching the recovery. It's, uh it's a blessing to see that it can happen. You know you can come back. A big thing Mr Keith really looked forward to was playing with his grandkids again. He's got really, really young grandchildren and being able to hold them, throw the ball to them, catch them little things like that that he wasn't sure he would be able to do again. My grandson, he called every night before he goes to bed. Goodnight, Papa Paul, I love you. Popo has the old man that makes me melt like butter, but it gives me the motivation to do better. Right now, he'll speak in his falsetto to rest his pipes and his vocal cords. But he'll try and he'll say, Yeah, you can see how I still have my voice. I'm pretty fluent. That's doing the things that I need to do getting in and out of bed, going, taking a shower. I was using my left hand at first, but now I use my right and I can use my right hand much more than I'm a right handed person. Now I'm still walking with a bit of a limp, but at least I am balanced enough to do some walking. I'm at the point where they're trying to get where I can raise one leg and stand on the other, and that's been a little difficult. But again, that's where the therapy comes in their biggest messages to just follow Whatever guidelines may be in place, and the sooner everyone cracks down and does what they're supposed to do, they said, the sooner we will be able to get back to what we love. Mr Keith is now vaccinated, and he is just overjoyed about that. He told me he's even at his church right now, helping others who are just dealing with the mental weight of this pandemic. He's using his story and his situation to help motivate and to inspire others who are feeling defeated. The key is to keep your life going like it was before, and I venture to do that now. Now that I had the shot, I'm, uh I'm looking at trying to start getting out a little more. Get to Atlanta by the other grandkids. Do the car shows again. The numbers are really coming down. I just hope that we will wait just a little bit longer for the numbers to stay down and, uh and then we can We can really start moving around and being free again. I'm not the same person that I was, you know, prior to getting covid, that's for sure. Man. You know, in a couple of months, it'll be almost a year that I've been gone away from the line. Luis Perea is a firefighter with the city of Davis. It was kind of right at the beginning of the pandemic, and we were starting to see cases in Sacramento in the surrounding areas. But this is the first time that we had heard about our first responders coming down with the virus. We still have to go to the structure, fires and traffic accidents, and all the other things are happening. Those expectations of us haven't changed. And then even when the patient needs, like CPR or something like that. Then it's all hands on. The thing about Lewis was he was the fire captain. And so what was interesting about it was the Fire Department already had covid protocols in place. And so what that meant was there was a lead who would go into calls and kind of make that first contact so not everyone would possibly be exposed. And he was that guy. I was the one going in. I had the wrinkle. I had the mask. I had the glove. Three Davis firefighters ended up getting covid, and because of that, he started isolating from his family, and that's when he started to feel unwell. So he had chills. He had body aches. He did get a fever. And then five days later, he tested positive for the coronavirus. His heart started to be really fast, and when he finally was checked out at a clinic, they said, You need to get to the ER now and you know, he said, he's a firefighter, so he is active and he works out all of the time. He was really surprised that it took him down as quickly and as badly as it did. I was definitely shocked that I it really got me. It's better to be safe than sorry. Sometimes there's a firefighter. We think, Hey, nothing, nothing could happen to us. But it did. He talked about how they wheeled him into the hospital and how there was a ventilator already. They're already in his room. He didn't need it. But I think the sight of that really, really worry him. The doctor even told him that he was on the edge of a cliff. I felt like I couldn't breed. It was it was just like I had no control of my body. I felt my body was weak. I had, like, no strength. I felt like the answer to I felt like I was going to die. I felt for the first time that man, this is it. I'm going to be part of a statistic of someone that didn't make it. I never got to say about it in my life. I got on my phone and I was kind of like hurt because I missed. I had missed Easter with my family, so that was a big deal for me at that moment. I was like, Oh, man, this is This is tough. So I started pulling pictures and I saw a picture from last year when I was, like, trust as a Batman and kind of, like, motivated me to like, um, I got to fight this. Luis was in the hospital for a little while, and he eventually got out and quarantined, but the effects of Covid did not go away instantly. For six months, he had trouble breathing. He had rapid heartbeat, and then it actually escalated to where he ended up meeting Bernie surgery because he was coughing so much. And so as a fire captain, you really wanted to get back on the front lines, but he couldn't. It hurts me a lot knowing that, you know, during this fire season, and I can't be out there with my brothers and sisters, you know, helping out. Louise kept testing positive for the coronavirus for seven months, and they would say, Oh, no, no, no, no. I don't actually have it anymore. He's part of a study to find out why that's the case. Why he kept testing positive all of these months later in January, I spoke with Luis, and he had just gotten his vaccine kind of emotional for me because I survived this cove in where it could have been a different situation. It could have been I could have been dead. And to know that I have a vaccine that protects not only the community but also my you know, my guys and my girls at the firehouse. And having experienced that, that's what he wanted to keep sharing his story, to let people know whatever precautions you can take if you can get the vaccine when you're eligible to take that seriously, this virus is no joke. But this one really, really knocked me out. This one almost took my life. This one actually almost took me away from my wife and kids and I actually, it's all for the first time in my life, like, Wow, I could die from this. And I spoke with Luis in January. He was really looking forward to possibly going back to work, and you could really tell just talking to him how how things have changed. I can't wait. I missed my crew. I got I mean, working for City of Davis's. It's an amazing place. I love going on cause that's why I signed up for this. The doctor says you go back to work and that's gonna be the one of the best days of my life. It sounds like things are going well. Usually every time I talked to Luis, we can get on Zoom or Skype immediately because he's been on light duty. But he says he's swamped because he's back. Mhm, Mm, yeah.
For many sufferers of lingering COVID-19 symptoms, proving they are sick is a big part of the battle
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Updated: 8:06 AM CDT Apr 11, 2021
Lyth Hishmeh kept feeling ill months after contracting coronavirus a year ago in March. He had chest pain and couldn't concentrate. At 26 years old, the former regular runner was fatigued and breathless, struggling to function properly. Yet medical professionals kept telling him he simply could not still be ill."They were telling me it's all in my head," he said. For Hishmeh who lives in London and many sufferers of lingering COVID-19 symptoms, proving they are sick has become a big part of trying to get better.Another Londoner, Monique Jackson, has lost count of the number of times her pain was described as "just anxiety." The 32-year old illustrator was repeatedly told by medical professionals to go to the accidents and emergency, only to be discharged soon after. "I felt like I was wasting people's time, that people either didn't believe me ... or the ones who were sympathetic and supportive said 'we don't know, it's a new disease and we just don't know,'" she said.Learning that they were not alone, that other people were experiencing the same issues, was a huge revelation for both Hishmeh and Jackson. This was not just in their heads. They were not imagining the pain. They really were sick.Long Covid, also called post-Covid syndrome, is shaping up to be a major, long-term public health issue. In the U.K. alone, almost 700,000 people reported having symptoms for at least three months after getting infected with COVID-19, according to a survey done by the U.K. Office for National Statistics in March. A majority of the 700,000 said their illness was limiting their day-to-day activities and for almost 70,000, the symptoms have lasted for more than a year.A separate study published last month showed that seven in 10 people who had been hospitalized for COVID-19 have not fully recovered five months after being discharged.While the figures made big headlines, they did not come as a surprise to long-haulers and their doctors.About 10% suffer long-termDr. Manoj Sivan, an associate clinical professor and consultant at the University of Leeds, was one of the first physicians to start writing about COVID-19 long-haulers last spring. As a rehabilitation medicine expert, he knew previous epidemics of SARS and MERS left some patients suffering from post-viral syndromes a long time after the epidemics were declared to be over. He was seeing the same patterns with the coronavirus."Anyone who's recovering from Covid is expected to make a good recovery, a full recovery, within four to six weeks," he said. "In about 10% to 20% of people, the symptoms can linger beyond the four to six week period and in about 10% of people, the symptoms can persist even beyond 12 weeks, when it becomes a real problem."Sivan said that while symptoms can vary from patient to patient, there are some that appear to be very common. "I would say the big five are fatigue, breathlessness, pain, brain fog, and psychological problems," he continued.Many patients also experience symptoms associated with dysautonomia, which is caused by an imbalance in the autonomic nervous system and which can include palpitations, dizziness, and psychological problems like anxiety, depression and PTSD, Sivan added. Some people have had rashes and joint swelling and some have developed new allergies.The vast number of different symptoms make long Covid a particularly worrying public health problem."When you look at chronic pain, or, let's say, hypertension or diabetes, they are big problems, they're prevalent in the population and they're costly, however, there is very streamlined way of managing them -- you go to the GP, you got high blood pressure, you get put on drug A, if that doesn't work, they add drug B, so there's a protocol, there are clinics and a single clinician can manage it."That's not the case with long Covid, he said. "You need a full set of professionals, a multidisciplinary team, which is very expensive, and it's very difficult to set up and to deal with," he said.The National Health Service (NHS) in England has set up around 70 long Covid clinics. But demand is much, much higher than the number of places available. Monique Jackson said that while she has been fortunate to find doctors who were helpful and understanding, she has not been able to get into this type of clinic.Her recovery has been "up and down," with new symptoms popping up every few months. "Headaches, the shortness of breath, I had weird things like blue fingers, and the right side of my face felt like it dropped and it still feels different to the left side, I had the nerve sensations all throughout my body like hair was being dragged across the surface of my skin," she said. Jackson got so ill she had to move back in with her family. She spent the summer wearing lots of jumpers, not able to shake off the chills. Chest pain and insomnia kept her awake for months. "It wasn't just tiredness, it was like I'd forgotten how to sleep. I only got one or two hours a night," she said.Her symptoms were so bizarre and overwhelming, she kept searching online to see if anyone else reported them. When she couldn't find much, she started chronicling her experiences in a visual diary online. Gradually, she started coming across other patients and support groups on social media.Dr. Nisreen Alwan, an associate professor of public health at the University of Southampton, said the mobilization of long Covid patients through social media helped speed up the recognition of the condition as a serious problem."We are definitely in a better place now, because more people know about it, more doctors and healthcare professionals know about it, but it's important to say that there's still a lot of variation in how much people are recognized and whether they are believed or not, because we haven't got a universal standard definition of what long Covid is," she said."And it also depends on who you are," she added. "We know also from the past and from the other illnesses that there are groups who are less believed 鈥� women, people from ethnic minorities, people who are from more deprived backgrounds 鈥� there is that risk of it still being attributed to straightaway to psychological presentation, like anxiety."Hishmeh and Jackson are both active inpatient support groups. Jackson has been speaking to experts, posting resources on her blog. Hishmeh has co-founded Long Covid SOS, an advocacy group that campaigns on behalf of patients to get more recognition for the condition, more research into it and more support for those suffering from it.Jackson said she's turned the corner about 10 months after getting sick. While she is still not back to her former self, she is feeling better. She also said that her symptoms have calmed down noticeably after she got the COVID-19 vaccine. While the experts aren't yet certain about the science on why this could be happening or how long patients' improvement might last, other COVID-19 long-haulers have also reported relief after getting inoculated.Second pandemicMore than 133 million people globally have been infected with the coronavirus. While it's unclear how many are suffering from long Covid, public health experts are warning of a 'second pandemic' of long-hauler disease."The scale is enormous," said Dr. Clare Rayner, a retired occupational health physician and herself a long Covid patient. "And the U.K. is wealthy compared to most countries, we're supposed to have systems in place and if we're struggling, the implications for countries that are less well off and developing is huge, I don't even think it's being recorded, we don't know how many people have it."A study released earlier this week has shown that as many as one in three people infected with COVID-19 have longer-term mental health or neurological symptoms.Rayner said it is this aspect of long Covid that could be particularly worrying because it impacts people's ability to return to work. She said many long Covid patients are experiencing cognitive difficulties like memory problems, speech difficulties, ability to concentrate, read or plan their day."We have an enormous amount of people who have been off sick for a year, they are young people, mainly they are of working age, most seem to have been completely healthy before and suddenly they cannot work," she said. "Even if they get better, what we're finding is that people have relapses, they go back, they want to go back and then exertion, either of the brain or the body can seem to trigger a relapse," she said.Hishmeh is one of the young people Rayner is talking about. Now 27, and a year on from his initial infection, he is still unable to return to work. Before becoming ill, Hishmeh was a software engineer, researching artificial intelligence and "doing a lot of thinking." He wants to get back to his career 鈥� but can't."I'm 27, these are my prime, golden years and my brain can't work at that level anymore, I get exhausted, I get tired, my eyes get strained," he said.
Lyth Hishmeh kept feeling ill months after contracting coronavirus a year ago in March. He had chest pain and couldn't concentrate. At 26 years old, the former regular runner was fatigued and breathless, struggling to function properly. Yet medical professionals kept telling him he simply could not still be ill.
"They were telling me it's all in my head," he said. For Hishmeh who lives in London and many sufferers of lingering COVID-19 symptoms, proving they are sick has become a big part of trying to get better.
Another Londoner, Monique Jackson, has lost count of the number of times her pain was described as "just anxiety." The 32-year old illustrator was repeatedly told by medical professionals to go to the accidents and emergency, only to be discharged soon after.
"I felt like I was wasting people's time, that people either didn't believe me ... or the ones who were sympathetic and supportive said 'we don't know, it's a new disease and we just don't know,'" she said.
Learning that they were not alone, that other people were experiencing the same issues, was a huge revelation for both Hishmeh and Jackson. This was not just in their heads. They were not imagining the pain. They really were sick.
Long Covid, also called post-Covid syndrome, is shaping up to be a major, long-term public health issue. In the U.K. alone, almost 700,000 people reported having symptoms for at least three months after getting infected with COVID-19, according to a survey done by the U.K. Office for National Statistics in March. A majority of the 700,000 said their illness was limiting their day-to-day activities and for almost 70,000, the symptoms have lasted for more than a year.
A separate study published last month showed that seven in 10 people who had been hospitalized for COVID-19 have not fully recovered five months after being discharged.
While the figures made big headlines, they did not come as a surprise to long-haulers and their doctors.
About 10% suffer long-term
Dr. Manoj Sivan, an associate clinical professor and consultant at the University of Leeds, was one of the first physicians to start writing about COVID-19 long-haulers last spring. As a rehabilitation medicine expert, he knew previous epidemics of SARS and MERS left some patients suffering from post-viral syndromes a long time after the epidemics were declared to be over. He was seeing the same patterns with the coronavirus.
"Anyone who's recovering from Covid is expected to make a good recovery, a full recovery, within four to six weeks," he said. "In about 10% to 20% of people, the symptoms can linger beyond the four to six week period and in about 10% of people, the symptoms can persist even beyond 12 weeks, when it becomes a real problem."
Sivan said that while symptoms can vary from patient to patient, there are some that appear to be very common. "I would say the big five are fatigue, breathlessness, pain, brain fog, and psychological problems," he continued.
Many patients also experience symptoms associated with dysautonomia, which is caused by an imbalance in the autonomic nervous system and which can include palpitations, dizziness, and psychological problems like anxiety, depression and PTSD, Sivan added. Some people have had rashes and joint swelling and some have developed new allergies.
The vast number of different symptoms make long Covid a particularly worrying public health problem.
"When you look at chronic pain, or, let's say, hypertension or diabetes, they are big problems, they're prevalent in the population and they're costly, however, there is very streamlined way of managing them -- you go to the GP, you got high blood pressure, you get put on drug A, if that doesn't work, they add drug B, so there's a protocol, there are clinics and a single clinician can manage it."
That's not the case with long Covid, he said. "You need a full set of professionals, a multidisciplinary team, which is very expensive, and it's very difficult to set up and to deal with," he said.
The National Health Service (NHS) in England has set up around 70 long Covid clinics. But demand is much, much higher than the number of places available. Monique Jackson said that while she has been fortunate to find doctors who were helpful and understanding, she has not been able to get into this type of clinic.
Her recovery has been "up and down," with new symptoms popping up every few months. "Headaches, the shortness of breath, I had weird things like blue fingers, and the right side of my face felt like it dropped and it still feels different to the left side, I had the nerve sensations all throughout my body like hair was being dragged across the surface of my skin," she said.
Jackson got so ill she had to move back in with her family. She spent the summer wearing lots of jumpers, not able to shake off the chills. Chest pain and insomnia kept her awake for months. "It wasn't just tiredness, it was like I'd forgotten how to sleep. I only got one or two hours a night," she said.
Her symptoms were so bizarre and overwhelming, she kept searching online to see if anyone else reported them. When she couldn't find much, she started chronicling her experiences in a . Gradually, she started coming across other patients and support groups on social media.
Dr. Nisreen Alwan, an associate professor of public health at the University of Southampton, said the mobilization of long Covid patients through social media helped speed up the recognition of the condition as a serious problem.
"We are definitely in a better place now, because more people know about it, more doctors and healthcare professionals know about it, but it's important to say that there's still a lot of variation in how much people are recognized and whether they are believed or not, because we haven't got a universal standard definition of what long Covid is," she said.
"And it also depends on who you are," she added. "We know also from the past and from the other illnesses that there are groups who are less believed 鈥� women, people from ethnic minorities, people who are from more deprived backgrounds 鈥� there is that risk of it still being attributed to straightaway to psychological presentation, like anxiety."
Hishmeh and Jackson are both active inpatient support groups. Jackson has been speaking to experts, posting resources on her blog. Hishmeh has co-founded , an advocacy group that campaigns on behalf of patients to get more recognition for the condition, more research into it and more support for those suffering from it.
Jackson said she's turned the corner about 10 months after getting sick. While she is still not back to her former self, she is feeling better. She also said that her symptoms have calmed down noticeably after she got the COVID-19 vaccine. While the experts aren't yet certain about the science on why this could be happening or how long patients' improvement might last, other COVID-19 long-haulers have also reported relief after getting inoculated.
Second pandemic
More than 133 million people globally have been infected with the coronavirus. While it's unclear how many are suffering from long Covid, public health experts are warning of a 'second pandemic' of long-hauler disease.
"The scale is enormous," said Dr. Clare Rayner, a retired occupational health physician and herself a long Covid patient. "And the U.K. is wealthy compared to most countries, we're supposed to have systems in place and if we're struggling, the implications for countries that are less well off and developing is huge, I don't even think it's being recorded, we don't know how many people have it."
A study released earlier this week has shown that as many as one in three people infected with COVID-19 have longer-term mental health or neurological symptoms.
Rayner said it is this aspect of long Covid that could be particularly worrying because it impacts people's ability to return to work. She said many long Covid patients are experiencing cognitive difficulties like memory problems, speech difficulties, ability to concentrate, read or plan their day.
"We have an enormous amount of people who have been off sick for a year, they are young people, mainly they are of working age, most seem to have been completely healthy before and suddenly they cannot work," she said. "Even if they get better, what we're finding is that people have relapses, they go back, they want to go back and then exertion, either of the brain or the body can seem to trigger a relapse," she said.
Hishmeh is one of the young people Rayner is talking about. Now 27, and a year on from his initial infection, he is still unable to return to work. Before becoming ill, Hishmeh was a software engineer, researching artificial intelligence and "doing a lot of thinking." He wants to get back to his career 鈥� but can't.
"I'm 27, these are my prime, golden years and my brain can't work at that level anymore, I get exhausted, I get tired, my eyes get strained," he said.
