Hospitals in Ohio are opening clinics that offer special services for people with lasting symptoms from COVID-19. But wait times are long and involve seeing several specialists. For Ohio Public Radio, WKSU’s Jeff St.Clair reports that one year into the pandemic, the road to recovery remains a long haul for many COVID patients and providers.
The coronavirus knocked Donna Zalezny flat.
“Severe muscle and joint pains, shortness of breath – it just felt like there wasn’t enough air in the room…”
Heart palpitations, trouble focusing, brain fog, and above all…
“Extreme fatigue…”
The coronavirus sapped all her stamina…
“I spent a good amount of time just trying to build up enough strength to stay upright for 15 minutes, or stay in the chair for 30 minutes and then go back to bed…”
Six months later Zalezny is still struggling to regain a fraction of her former resilience…
“I can manage maybe half a mile as long as I go really slowly…”
She’s a COVID longhauler, one of a growing number of Ohioans who experience symptoms more than four weeks after the initial infection.
Like many longhaulers, Zalezny met with skepticism when trying to get help for her range of lingering symptoms, including a racing heart…
“I had a cardiologist tell me that my tachycardia, and my chest pains, and my shortness of breath were anxiety…”
It’s been a long fight for recognition according to Amanda Finley.
She’s moderator of the COVID-19 Long-Haulers Facebook group…
“When we try to explain some of these symptoms particularly the stranger ones, like teeth chipping or loss of smell, our physicians don’t know and they just chalk it up to anxiety…”
A survey of around 1300 longhaulers in her group showed that COVID caused more than 200 symptoms ranging from the common… like headaches, fatigue, brain fog, shortness of breath…
to the bizarre…like tooth pain, ringing in the ears, or vivid dreams.
Many experience anxiety, insomnia, and memory loss.
Finley says rather than dismiss people’s outlying symptoms, doctors need to take note of them to track the full extent of COVID’s impacts…
“If we’re not taking careful notes of these little things, we could be missing out on clues to put things together, and we could also be missing out on events that might lead to more serious complications down the road.”
Dr. Kristin Englund is taking note of various ways the virus can have long-term effects.
She’s head of the reCOVer Clinic, a new service at the Cleveland Clinic specializing in long-COVID patients.
Englund says patterns are emerging, especially the prevalence among women…
“we're seeing about 80% female…”
Most have fatigue, but other symptoms are common…
“Dizziness is in about 52%. The brain fog is about 68%...”
Half experience psychiatric problems, like depression and paranoia.
Other longhaulers have visual problems, trouble sleeping, hair loss, rashes, or intolerance to heat and cold...
“It is not like another virus that we have seen that it’s really this widespread throughout so many organs.”
Englund co-oridinates a team of 18 specialties to treat long COVID patients.
( those include cardiologists, pulmonologists, vascular medicine, neurology, psychiatry, renal doctors, sleep specialists, physical therapists…)
Patients will often see more than one specialist.
MetroHealth Medical Center also offers a post-COVID clinic to treat longhaulers.
Dr. Elisheva Weinberger is a rheumatologist who helped launch it...
“The reason why we put this clinic together was because we saw that this was likely going to overwhelm the primary care doctors…”
She says that the need is enormous…
“I think we’re hitting the tip of the iceberg here…”
Studies show that around half of people who’ve had the infection become longhaulers.
That means more than half-a-million Ohioans have dealt or are still dealing with long COVID, according to Weinberger.
“This is absolutely going to be a huge burden on healthcare…”
Longhauler Donna Zalezny, after four months on the waiting list, will meet with COVID doctors at the Cleveland Clinic …
She’s not the only one at the end of her rope…
“I know there are a lot of discouraged longhaulers out there right now.”
The transmission rate may be receding, but the aftermath of COVID-19 remains a challenge for Ohio’s health care system and economic recovery as the true toll of the virus becomes apparent.