https://hellgatenyc.com/nyc-has-left-people-with-long-covid-behind
"I thought I was getting better. After months of battling long COVID, I felt
well enough to venture out for a backyard lunch with my family. But as I stood
up to leave, my head started swimming and my body turned to lead, my arms and
legs barely able to move. My brain struggled to form words as pain shot through
my chest and waves of nausea rolled through me. I had to be helped into an Uber
home, where I couldn’t get out of bed for hours. It was the beginning of a long
decline.
Things like this happen because of a COVID-triggered disorder called POTS, or
postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, which causes my heart rate to spike
when I stand up due to dysfunction in my autonomic nervous system. That’s the
system that controls heartbeat, blood flow, breathing, and other functions the
body performs automatically—all the stuff you never think about until it stops
working.
As a reporter, I covered the pandemic from the early days of constantly wailing
sirens, field hospitals in Central Park, and morgue trucks in the streets. All
the while, I did my best to protect myself, as the scars of those days stayed
with me. But the virus finally got me in July 2022, well after we were supposed
to "have the tools" to make COVID no big deal.
I realized that something wasn’t right after my flu-like COVID-19 symptoms had
cleared and I attempted to go back to working from home. I made a cup of coffee
and sat down at my laptop as usual, but within an hour or two my heart rate was
spiking, and I was so dizzy I could no longer sit up. A couple days later, I
landed in the emergency room.
I’ve been sick ever since. In January, I made the difficult decision to take a
step back from my job as a New York politics reporter, to focus full time on my
recovery. I'm now one of up to four million Americans out of work due to long
COVID.
In the past year, I’ve seen three cardiologists, two neurologists, two
rheumatologists, an immunologist, two ophthalmologists, a pulmonologist, two
orthopedists, three primary care doctors, two ER doctors, and two urgent care
doctors."
Via Violet Blue’s
Pandemic Roundup: August 10, 2023
https://www.patreon.com/posts/pandemic-roundup-87469419
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
