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Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications for healthcare planning

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Re: Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications for healthcare planning

#101

Post by satysin »

jacquesm wrote: post #3

One of those cases here. Symptoms: suddenly out of energy, occasionally suddenly being unable to spell, even mild physical exercise leaves me floored (and I was pretty fit for my age prior to this). So, 17 months in: it's still not back to where it used to be but if you think of it in terms of trends instead of absolutes it is definitely still improving. The downs are less far down, the fog is lifting and the energy…

Ever since having COVID back in March 2020 I haven't been the same. I still have regular fatigue but my biggest issue is chest pains.

For the past few months I have had worsening discomfort/pain in my chest. It was so bad a few weeks ago I ended up going to A&E thinking I was having a heart attack. They did an ECG, sonogram of my heart, chest x-rays, bloods, etc. My heart was fine so not a heart attack.

They put it down to either a panic attack (possible) or a gastro problem so I am going for an endoscopy next week however I have a feeling I will end up needing a CT scan or MRI as I had high lipase levels in a blood test a few weeks ago that makes them want to look at my pancreas in my detail. It isn't urgent as two blood tests since them have shown normal levels and it isn't getting worse.

Plus random abdominal pains all over yet an abdominal scan shows nothing out of the ordinary.

Basically COVID has fucked me up long term. When I actually had COVID it didn't feel like a big deal, just a bit of a cough for two days and a little drained. But two months after COVID I started getting a shit load of problems and over a year later it is no better.

37 year old male in [redacted] fyi.

Re: Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications for healthcare planning

#102

Post by 3327 »

mygoodaccount wrote: post #10
jacquesm wrote: post #3

One of those cases here. Symptoms: suddenly out of energy, occasionally suddenly being unable to spell, even mild physical exercise leaves me floored (and I was pretty fit for my age prior to this). So, 17 months in: it's still not back to where it used to be but if you think of it in terms of trends instead of absolutes it is definitely still improving. The downs are less far down, the fog is lifting and the energy…

Another one here (Woman, 24 y.o.). Contracted COVID, had a terrible three-weeks of infection. Nine months later, I am having weekly heart palpitations, I'm constantly fatigued and fogged in the mind and my lung capacity is half what it used to be - I now require an inhaler to go on my runs. I know several women my age experiencing far worse. Long COVID should not be ignored.

Thank the lab.

Re: Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications for healthcare planning

#103

Post by jacquesm »

clairity wrote: post #88
jacquesm wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I'm not a complete idiot. - pandemic in progress: check - risky lifestyle: check (as in very frequent air travel for work) - symptoms: O2 level drop, fluid in lungs, persistent cough, extreme tiredness, dizzyness, loss of smell/taste check all of these, and the rest, fortunately not. Later on: crazy beating heart for no particular reason, losing weight steadily but more slowly now. Decision not to test was ma…

> “Because I'm not a complete idiot.” yah, it’s the partial idiots who are hard to discern. complete idiots are the easiest to dismiss out of hand. many infections have long lasting effects. you’d need to systematically rule them out/in via testing to be as certain as you claim to be.

Right, well let's just say that coincidentally I had a viral infection that has the exact same symptoms as COVID, has the same long term effects as are reported in many cases of COVID and which coincidentally happened to be timed to match the first wave of that particular pandemic, but according to you it wasn't COVID when it wasn't confirmed as such with a test.

Consider the alternative: you would have to come up with some kind of viral agent that did the same thing but wasn't COVID.

Which to me seems to be a far more outrageous claim than the one that I was simply one of many. The test does not make the disease, it is merely positive confirmation, but I've yet to hear of some surprise viral disease that ran in parallel to this, isn't COVID but matches the symptoms so well.

Re: Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications for healthcare planning

#105

Post by gizmo »

iammisc wrote: post #49

When my first daughter was born in 2018, I had a respiratory infection. It lasted three months before I went in to the doctor. I hesitated to seek medical advice because it was clearly viral. But the cough was so bad it was causing the newborn to wake up. The doctor (at a walk-in clinic) told me viral respiratory infections can last months and there's nothing you can do. Just wait. HE gave me some pills to stop the c…

Because your doctor is right. Serious viral infections are no joke. Long covid asserts that people with very mild symptoms are also likely to suffer long term. This is controversial.

Re: Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications for healthcare planning

#106

Post by avgDev »

lambdaba wrote: post #56
mygoodaccount wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another one here (Woman, 24 y.o.). Contracted COVID, had a terrible three-weeks of infection. Nine months later, I am having weekly heart palpitations, I'm constantly fatigued and fogged in the mind and my lung capacity is half what it used to be - I now require an inhaler to go on my runs. I know several women my age experiencing far worse. Long COVID should not be ignored.

I hope this is taken the right way, but have you tried "vitamins" (broadly speaking)? Some I have seen with specific effects: Niacin, Black Seed Oil (Nigella Sativa), Magnesium megadoses, etc. etc. Don't dismiss these as "quack medicines", I've recovered from severe chronic illness thanks to some of these... I could expand if people ask, but really it's quite easy, especially for the HN crowd, to level-up rapidly on…

I just want to add a bit to this. While there is a lot of snake oil supplements, there is a also quite a bit research on some supplements helping.

I'm speaking from personal experience here. I suffer from a mild case of Erythromelalgia. During typing my fingers and hands would get red and feel warm. My case is most likely secondary caused by some nerve damage from a medication I took. There is a doctor who had severe case of it and has done some research on using magnesium/ala and it made his condition 95% better and he was able to return back to work. I have been following his protocol for about a month now, and it has made an incredible difference.

Anyone who is suffering from an annoying illness, that is not aggressive and require immediate treatment, should try research possible supplements and diets. Clean/healthy diet is always good.

Re: Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications for healthcare planning

#107

Post by causi »

Yes, you can easily see symptoms that arise well after the active infection is over. Personally I had complete loss of smell and taste that slowly came mostly back over a two month period, only to suddenly go bizarre at the tail end. Six months later I can only assume something between my nasal membranes or olfactory bulbs healed wrong because my sense of smell is just as good as it was pre-covid, it's just incorrect. Feces, beef, chocolate, and french fries all have the same stale/burnt grease smell. I've essentially lost hope the problem is going to correct itself.

Re: Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications for healthcare planning

#108

Post by SamBam »

perlgeek wrote: post #90
iammisc wrote: post #49

When my first daughter was born in 2018, I had a respiratory infection. It lasted three months before I went in to the doctor. I hesitated to seek medical advice because it was clearly viral. But the cough was so bad it was causing the newborn to wake up. The doctor (at a walk-in clinic) told me viral respiratory infections can last months and there's nothing you can do. Just wait. HE gave me some pills to stop the c…

With a "normal" viral cough, the infection itself lasts that long. With Long Covid, the viral load is gone from your system, and symptoms still persist Previously, the general public wasn't very interested in chronic, unspecific symptoms that people have or had (google Chronic Fatigue Syndrome; it's a collection of people feeling fatigue, have concentration issues etc. similar to Long Covid, many long before COVID-19…

Except that Post-Viral Syndrome has been a thing since before Covid:

> Post-viral syndrome, or post-viral fatigue, refers to a sense of tiredness and weakness that lingers after a person has fought off a viral infection. It can arise even after common infections, such as the flu.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326619

Re: Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications for healthcare planning

#109

Post by felixbraun »

jacquesm wrote: post #70
usaphp wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you were never tested for covid? How do you know if it was covid ?

Because I'm not a complete idiot. - pandemic in progress: check - risky lifestyle: check (as in very frequent air travel for work) - symptoms: O2 level drop, fluid in lungs, persistent cough, extreme tiredness, dizzyness, loss of smell/taste check all of these, and the rest, fortunately not. Later on: crazy beating heart for no particular reason, losing weight steadily but more slowly now. Decision not to test was ma…

You could check for T-cells at some point -- if you had Covid, they are measurable even after many months. In contrast, IgG titers show up in only ~80% and decline steadily. Excellent recent paper:

> Here, we investigated SARS-CoV-2 antibody and T cell responses in matched samples of COVID-19 convalescent individuals up to 6 months after infection. Longitudinal analysis revealed decreasing and stable spike- and nucleocapsid-specific antibody responses, respectively. In contrast, functional T cell responses remained robust, and even increased, in both frequency and intensity.

https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/13/590/eabf7517

Re: Burden of post-Covid-19 syndrome and implications for healthcare planning

#110

Post by dragontamer »

satysin wrote: post #101
jacquesm wrote: post #3

One of those cases here. Symptoms: suddenly out of energy, occasionally suddenly being unable to spell, even mild physical exercise leaves me floored (and I was pretty fit for my age prior to this). So, 17 months in: it's still not back to where it used to be but if you think of it in terms of trends instead of absolutes it is definitely still improving. The downs are less far down, the fog is lifting and the energy…

Ever since having COVID back in March 2020 I haven't been the same. I still have regular fatigue but my biggest issue is chest pains. For the past few months I have had worsening discomfort/pain in my chest. It was so bad a few weeks ago I ended up going to A&E thinking I was having a heart attack. They did an ECG, sonogram of my heart, chest x-rays, bloods, etc. My heart was fine so not a heart attack. They put it d…

I hear these stories and it makes me wonder if I somehow caught SARS way back in the early 2000s. Because these long symptoms people talk about were exactly what I felt back then.

There was some dramatic respiratory illness I got that took took months before I felt "like normal" again. I was a young teenager so I never felt like I needed to go to the emergency room. But the amount of time it took to recover back was insane.

I know I recovered by 6 months, but... yeah. That incident scared me for life. Sickness can be scary, not knowing if you'd ever get better from something...

I can't imagine the stress I'd feel today if some illness afflicted me for more than 6 months.

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