[imagesource: Instagram / @_coronadiary]

People have been experiencing mild to severe symptoms of COVID-19 long after they’ve ‘recovered’, but what’s worse is that they are finding it difficult to prove their sickness to health practitioners.

‘Long COVID’ sufferers and a study about symptoms lingering in the brain well beyond the initial infection have been out here saying all of this.

CNN has further reported on this phenomenon and it turns out doctors are just as baffled as patients.

26-year-old Lyth Hishmeh, as fit as a regular runner, was told it was “all in [his] head” when he went to a doctor with chest pain, fatigue, and difficulty concentrating and breathing.

Another patient, 32-year-old Monique Jackson, kept experiencing pain and was turned away by doctors with “we just don’t know” or undermined with explanations of “it’s just anxiety”:

“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.

Hishmeh and Jackson are finding relief in knowing that they’re not alone in this, as more and more people are coming out with the same complaints.

It isn’t just in their heads.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Corona Diary (@_coronadiary)

The UK alone have reports from almost 700 000 people with symptoms of Long COVID or Post-COVID Syndrome, as it is being called.

Another study published a month ago showed that seven in 10 people who had been hospitalised for COVID-19 have not fully recovered a full five months after being discharged.

Dr Manoj Sivan, an associate clinical professor and consultant at the University of Leeds, is aware of how epidemics leave some patients with post-viral syndromes for a long time and is seeing striking similarities in the COVID-19 pandemic:

“Anyone who’s recovering from COVID-19 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.”

He says the top five symptoms that occur in most patients are “fatigue, breathlessness, pain, brain fog, and psychological problems”.

He adds that patients also suffer from “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”.

While doctors are trying their best to be understanding, Long COVID clinics (70 of which have been set up in England) are in very high demand and difficult to get into.

Jackson, who was continuously experiencing a bizarre slew of symptoms (blue fingers, face drooping, creepy nerve sensations, forgetting how to sleep) couldn’t get into the clinics or find much about her suffering online.

She had no choice but to go to social media and illustrate her experience (one of which as seen above), and only then did she find support groups and people in the same boat.

People rallying in this way on social media is what’s speeding up the recognition of this phenomenon being a serious health problem.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Corona Diary (@_coronadiary)

It is becoming more and more clear that the COVID-19 pandemic seems to be morphing into a pandemic of long-haulers.

“The scale is enormous,” said Dr. Clare Rayner, a retired occupational health physician and herself a long Covid patient.

“And the UK 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.”

If you’re finding it increasingly difficult to function as normal after contracting COVID-19, then maybe you’re one of the long-haulers.

[source:cnn]