LONG COVID

Medical rehab programs help patients heal from long COVID-19 symptoms

Laura Butterbrodt — Sun, 02 Oct 2022 16:00:00 GMT

DULUTH — If you were infected by COVID-19 and experienced symptoms more than a month later, you aren’t alone. In fact, studies show about 10%-30% of people become long haulers — meaning they have new, ongoing or worsening symptoms 30 days or longer after their COVID infection.

Fay Haataja, of Carlton County, Minnesota, knew COVID had made a long-term impact on her when she started experiencing debilitating headaches, difficulty focusing, extreme fatigue and digestive problems. She was infected with COVID in November 2020.

“My life was no different from anybody else’s, and all of a sudden it came to this screeching halt,” Haataja said. “The headache just, like, exploded and I felt my brain shut down completely. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t focus. And then the headache lasted for about a year.”

In the weeks and months following her COVID infection, Haataja struggled to keep up at her job, where she worked in a leadership role at an area church. Decision-making was overwhelming to her, and she found following to-do lists and calendars nearly impossible.

She sought several doctors and specialists, which were difficult to schedule due to appointment backlog in the wake of the pandemic shutdown. She was able to determine what wasn’t wrong with her — including dementia — but she still didn’t have an answer for what was.

After more than six months of searching for answers, she saw Essentia integrative health specialist Rachel Scharfenberg, who gave her the news that no other practitioners had been able to tell her: She was not the only person experiencing these things.

“And that’s when I started believing that there’s hope,” Haataja said. “So that, I think, was a good point in this whole journey to just recognize that you’re not alone and that you’re not crazy. This is happening.”

According to the Household Pulse Study from the National Center for Health Statistics and the Census Bureau, about 16 million Americans age 18-65 were experiencing long COVID symptoms at the time of their survey this summer. Of those, 2 million-4 million are out of work due to their symptoms. Long COVID seems to affect more women than men, according to the study.

With guidance from Scharfenberg, Haataja began taking supplements and working on relaxation techniques to rest her body and mind. She saw gradual progress, but as time progressed, she realized she was missing many core memories from throughout her life.

“I knew people, but I looked at my husband and I said, ‘I don’t remember our wedding. I don’t remember dating you. I don’t remember giving birth to children. We home-schooled our kids — I don’t remember doing that. I know basic facts, but everything else is messed up,’” Haataja said. “I wasn’t able to recognize that early on because I was just so wrapped up in getting from point A to point B.”

Scharfenberg then referred Haataja to Essentia’s Polinsky Medical Rehabilitation Center in Duluth's Miller Hill Mall. There, she worked with counselor Gerry Ouellette and speech-language therapist Peggy Stone as part of Essentia’s post-COVID-19 rehab program.

Joan Jeanetta, rehabilitation director, said long COVID presents itself in a variety of ways, including fatigue, brain fog (difficulty focusing, concentrating or multitasking); weakness; poor endurance; challenges with daily activities; or challenges coping with illness and symptoms (depression or anxiety).

Essentia’s post-COVID rehab program begins with a patient assessment, where therapists will determine an individualized plan that could include a mix of physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech language pathology and/or rehabilitation psychology. The program began over a year ago and is offered at most Essentia Health locations.

“When we started seeing these symptoms from long COVID, it was just a natural connection to therapy,” Jeanetta said. “Our volume has increased significantly, and I think partly that’s due to just a heightened awareness in the community.”

St. Luke’s doesn’t have a designated COVID rehab program, but respiratory therapist Kristine Worcester said she’s seen a handful of long COVID patients in the pulmonary rehab program, which is a twice weekly program that meets for 12 weeks to improve shortness of breath and breathing endurance.

“One thing that’s kind of special to the post-long COVID patient is they seem a lot more anxious about getting back to exercising again,” Worcester said. “That fear of being short of breath is holding them back. I find that knowing they’re in a monitored environment where there’s people that can help them, they tend to relax a little bit and gain their confidence in exercising again.”

Other rehabilitative programs are also available at St. Luke’s, depending on the patient’s symptoms of long COVID.

Long COVID rehabilitation is recommended for people whose symptoms are so severe, they struggle to complete daily tasks, including going to work or participating in recreational activities. St. Luke’s requires a referral from a general practitioner, and Essentia can see patients with a referral from a primary care physician or with an appointment with a therapist.

For Haataja, the speech language therapy helped her overcome her neurological symptoms, including her brain fog and memory loss. She was given assignments, which included journaling, reading and recalling details from articles each day, and rediscovering who she was through conversations, photos and home videos. Her rehab lasted about six months, and although she completed sessions at the beginning of summer, Haataja said she still works daily to heal.

“You just had to be willing to get up in the morning and face whatever the day brought,” Haataja said. “Sometimes weird things happen, like we were sitting in church one day and all of a sudden my eyes teared up because I remembered a lady who I used to really like had died. Sometimes it catches you off-guard, so you have to give yourself space to say, ‘I’m healing.’”

One aspect of her life Haataja had been missing since her COVID infection was her artistic creativity. She said her son, to whom she taught pottery, has since retaught her the skill. One day, she wanted to paint, but couldn’t remember where her supplies were. After finding her paints, but no brushes, she began finger painting and created a piece she’s very proud of because it helped her rediscover her passion.

Haataja stepped down from her job last year because she didn’t feel fit to fill a leadership role while she struggled with her long COVID symptoms, but she has since found a new career path. She hasn’t experienced one of her debilitating headaches in a year.

“I do not know how long the healing journey will take, or if I will ever be back to ‘normal,’ but I am grateful for the many lessons I have learned as the discoveries each new day brings,” Haataja said.

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Lawmaker with ‘long COVID’ suffers medical issue on Minnesota Senate floor

Christopher Magan / St. Paul Pioneer Press — Wed, 27 Apr 2022 02:28:04 GMT

ST. PAUL — The Minnesota Senate took a brief unplanned recess Tuesday after Burnsville Sen. Lindsey Port suffered an undisclosed medical issue on the chamber floor.

Port, a Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party member in her first term, was taken to nearby Regions Hospital for what she called a “full and thorough examination.”

“I am in stable condition and expect to be discharged soon,” Port said in a statement Tuesday afternoon.

“As I recently revealed publicly, I am living with the effects of long COVID, and medical professionals are currently evaluating to see if that is the reason for this incident,” she wrote. “I want to thank the quick and professional action taken by my Senate colleagues, Senate staff, and the medical professionals who attended to me.”

Long COVID affects as many as 30 percent of people who catch the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Symptoms include fatigue, brain fog, dizziness and shortness of breath.

Senators were in the midst of debating the GOP-led chamber’s Health and Human Services bill when a recess was called for a medical situation. Debate resumed about 15 minutes later and the bill was eventually approved with a 61-5 vote.

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When symptoms linger for weeks, is it long COVID?

Nina Feldman / WHYY for Kaiser Health News — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 15:01:00 GMT

Many Americans are discovering that recovering from COVID-19 may take weeks or even months longer than expected, leaving them with lingering symptoms like intense fatigue or a racing pulse. But does that mean they have what’s known as long COVID?

Though such cases may not always amount to debilitating long COVID, which can leave people bedridden or unable to perform daily functions, it is common to take weeks to fully recover.

“There could be more to help people understand that it’s not always a quick bounce back right away after the initial infection,” said Dr. Ben Abramoff, director of the Post-COVID Assessment and Recovery Clinic at Penn Medicine in Philadelphia. “This is still a very significant viral infection, and sometimes it’s just a more gradual recovery process than people’s previous viral illnesses.“

Recent federal health guidelines — which recommend only five days of isolation for those who test positive and are symptom-free — may inadvertently suggest most recoveries are, if not just five days long, pretty quick.

That’s the message I got, at least.

I’ve reported on the coronavirus pandemic since it started, and I thought I knew what an infection would be like for a young, otherwise healthy person like me. I knew even mild cases could develop into long COVID. I thought they were relatively rare.

Like many Americans, I found myself slowed by a recovery that took more than a month — far longer than I had expected.

I got COVID over Christmas. I was vaccinated and boosted, and my symptoms were mild: sore throat, sinus pressure and headache, extreme fatigue. I felt better after eight days, and I tested negative two days in a row on a rapid antigen test.

Soon after ending isolation, I had dinner with a friend. One glass of wine left me feeling like I’d had a whole bottle. I was bone-achingly exhausted but couldn’t sleep.

The insomnia continued for weeks. Activities that once energized me — walking in the cold, riding an exercise bike, taking a sauna — instead left me intensely tired.

The waves of fatigue, which I started calling “crashes,” felt like coming down with an illness in real time: weakened muscles, aches, the feeling that all you can do is lie down. The crashes would last a couple of days, and the cycle would repeat when I accidentally pushed myself beyond my new, unfamiliar limit.

My colleague Kenny Cooper is also young, healthy, vaccinated, and boosted. He was sick for almost two weeks before testing negative. His symptoms lingered a few more weeks. A persistent cough kept him from leaving the house.

“I just felt like there were weights on my chest. I couldn’t sleep properly. When I woke up, if I moved around too much, I would start coughing immediately,” he said.

Abramoff has seen about 1,100 patients since Penn’s post-COVID clinic opened in June 2020. There is no official threshold at which someone officially becomes a long-COVID patient, he said.

The clinic takes a comprehensive approach to patients who have had symptoms for months, evaluating and referring them to specialists, like pulmonologists, or social workers who can assist with medical leave and disability benefits.

Those coming to the clinic with symptoms lasting six to eight weeks, Abramoff said, are generally sent home to rest. They will likely get better on their own. He advises patients with lingering symptoms to adopt a “watchful waiting” approach: Keep in contact with a primary care doctor, and take things slowly while recovering.

“You have got to build based on your tolerance,” he said. “People were very sick, even if they weren’t in the hospital.”

Long COVID criteria

A National Institutes of Health-funded study on long COVID, called Recover, designates any case with symptoms lasting more than 30 days as long COVID.

Dr. Stuart Katz, a New York University cardiologist who is the study’s principal investigator, said he estimates 25% to 30% of the nearly 60,000 COVID patients in the study will fit the long-COVID criteria.

The 30-day mark is an arbitrary cutoff, Katz said. “There’s this whole spectrum of changing symptoms over time.”

A study published in Nature last year tracked more than 4,000 COVID patients from initial infection until symptoms subsided. Roughly 13% reported symptoms lasting more than 28 days. That dropped to 4.5% after eight weeks and 2.3% after 12 weeks, indicating most people with symptoms lasting more than a month will recover within another month or two.

That leaves potentially millions of Americans suffering from a variety of COVID symptoms — some debilitating — and a lingering burden on the health care system and workforce. Recent research from the Brookings Institution estimated that lasting COVID symptoms could be responsible for up to 15% of the unfilled jobs in the U.S. labor market.

It took me about six weeks to start feeling better. My crashes got better, slowly, as a result of diligent rest and almost nothing else.

My colleague, Cooper, has also improved. His coughing fits have subsided, but he’s still dealing with brain fog.

The way most studies to date describe long COVID would leave us out.

But what I’ve come to think of as my “medium COVID” affected my life. I couldn’t socialize much, drink, or stay up past 9:30 p.m. It took me 10 weeks to go for my first run — I’d been too afraid to try, fearing another crash that would set me back again.

Failing to treat COVID as a serious condition could prolong recovery. Patients should monitor and care for themselves attentively, no matter how mild the infection may seem, Abramoff said.

“It’s something that could kill somebody who’s in their 70s,” he said. “It’s not nothing.”

This story is part of a partnership that includes

WHYY

NPR

, and KHN.

KHN

(Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at

KFF

(Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.]]>