8 ms·

My wife got covid in march. She wasn't hospitalised, but we did have to call an ambulance multiple times. She 'recovered' and was fine for about a week before d

My wife got covid in march. She wasn't hospitalised, but we did have to call an ambulance multiple times. She 'recovered' and was fine for about a week before developing most of these symptoms. The most infuriating part is how little help there is from medical professionals. She's now 4 months in with what can only be seen as a chronic health problem, but the only medical advice doctors will give her is to rest. After she recovered and came down with the post-covid symptoms, we went to a doctor whose best guess was that she had somehow got another viral infection (despite not leaving the house). My only hope is that as these symptoms become more widespread and well-known, long-term support is made available. It's incredibly frustrating that we've known about these issues for a couple of months (and so have many others, old.reddit.com/r/covid19positive was full of similar stories in march). Meanwhile it seems like medical professionals are only just starting to consider that it can affect you for more than a couple of weeks.

_nalply 6y ago
Sorry for your experience. Because I am also the husband of a sick wife, I can relate to you. My own feelings swing between hope and despair and a dread of future is emerging. Realistically, what do you expect from medical professionals?
- StevenWaterman 6y ago
  I certainly don't expect a magic bullet that solves everything, but I would like it to be treated like any other chronic illness. A single point of contact to help track and manage her symptoms, a care plan to ease her back into life with the expectation that some symptoms will be here forever, and the hope that they won't.
H8crilA 6y ago
> The most infuriating part is how little help there is from medical professionals (...) the only medical advice doctors will give her is to rest I don't think it's bad will, they simply have no idea what to do. Just see what the research looks like: "they" are still busy categorising symptoms. Understanding of this disease is still in early stages. It will improve. Mind boggling how just a few months ago all my friends were throwing the 0.x% CFR numbers for our age group, implying that there is nothing to be afraid of. There's much so more complexity and many unknown unknowns in health!
- StevenWaterman 6y ago
  Yeah absolutely, they're doing their best with the information available to them. That's why I'm hopeful that all the recent news around persistent symptoms will improve awareness and make more resources available. It's a nightmare situation all-round and I have full sympathy for the situation doctors are in.
  - kijin 6y ago
    Another problem is that most of the world is still too busy trying (and failing) to control the spread of infection. They don't have much attention to spare for people who aren't deemed infectious anymore.
    - annamargot 6y ago
      On top of that, downplaying the severity of covid is critical to the arguments of those who want this to be over for political, economic, or any reasons. The focus by many has been deaths. Mortality rate can be spun to make covid seem not so bad. If we start talking about the percentage of people whose lives are significantly affected, we create a much bigger percentage. If you’re trying to paint the opposite picture, it’s not in your interest to acknowledge or increase awareness of that percentage.
      - ThomPete 6y ago
        well tell that to the cancer, diabetes and high blood pressure ,depression victims who don't get diagnosed in time or havent gotten the proper treatment. Tell that to the people who's lifework have been destroyed and I could go on with people being significantly affected. Its not that simple.
        wbronitsky 6y ago
        The suggestion that everyone who is pro- aggressive disease containment has not had their life turned upside down by the global pandemic is lacks logic. Shutdowns are necessary to contain the virus, and the economic damage done from not containing the virus is far worse than the alternative. We know this because we have data. There are multiple countries that were hit very hard in the first wave, and then managed to contain the virus and accelerate their economies after; France, Spain and Italy are all great examples. IIUC, France now has 3.6% unemployment. They had strict lockdowns, followed by mask wearing, social distancing, and contact tracing. The same tactics are working for NYC in the US. We do ourselves a great disservice to act as if virus containment is bad because it destroys economies. No, the virus destroys economies, and containment allows us to continue once mitigated. That’s what the data clearly shows.
script3r 6y ago
You should research Chronic Fatigue Syndrome / Myalgic encephalomyelitis. The medical community, from my experience, does not handle this type of diagnosis well. I’ve experienced post-viral fatigue symptoms that lasted well over 8 months, and almost all doctors I visited (ranging from primary care to neurologists) suggested simply rest and/or believed it was depression related (even though I have never suffered from depression before). I hope your wife gets better. Remission from these symptoms is possible, but sadly, I don’t think you’ll get more information out of the doctors.
- hh3k0 6y ago
  > The medical community, from my experience, does not handle this type of diagnosis well. I've read some time ago that Stanford scientists developed a blood test. It'll be harder for docs to ignore once there's a proper diagnostic tool.
  - H_Pylori 6y ago
    >It'll be harder for docs to ignore once there's a proper diagnostic tool. Simon Wessely is already trying to cover is ass [0]. What a wonderful guy, he richly deserves his reputation. [0] https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-study-investigating-a-potential-biomarker-for-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-me/ https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-study-...
  - rtp 6y ago
    Yeah, in its initial study, the nanoneedle had a 100% specificity and selectivity, and according to Ron Davis - main author - the results have held up as they've increased the number of tested people. That said it might also give a positive result for other illnesses. Hopefully a follow-up will be published soon.
    - dm319 6y ago
      Be wary of anything that claims a 100% sensitivity and specificity. It usually indicates the wrong gold standard or poor methods.
jessriedel 6y ago
I don't think we have any non-trivial treatments that are safe and effective enough to use on non-hospitalized folks. Until a patient's condition gets bad enough to justify risky/unpleasant interventions, rest and hydration seem like the proper prescription.
scawf 6y ago
I have the exact same experience. It took about 100 days before my wife could start working again, and she is still experiencing chest pain, breathlessness and fatigue (at first symptoms + 115 days). She was told to endure and rest. What a great plan.
- watwut 6y ago
  There is no other known treatment. Or basically no known treatment.
- tenken 6y ago
  I'm not a doctor, but I would argue against rest. By that I mean, endure ... sure, but focus hopefully on calisthenics, breathing exercises, yoga, taking supplemental vitamins and improving physical fitness. Typically post surgery doctors recommend PT ... I'm just saying start some regular PT post illness -- not "rest".
garganzol 6y ago
Based on my humble experience, I would suggest her to take the walks in the open air. Start from small, then gradually increase. Once she reaches at least 3 km per day, the walking activities should fully rejuvenate her ability to breathe. This should totally work out. The moderate activities and safe relaxed walks do the miracles for the usual post-pneumonia as well. Note of caution: avoid walking in masks. A mask impairs the natural ventilation and you would not get the recovery effect. This means you should keep a healthy distance and avoid getting into crowded places.
- rbinv 6y ago
  > Once she reaches at least 3 km per day, the walking activities should fully rejuvenate her ability to breathe. And you base that on what? Seems completely arbitrary. You don't know any details of her issues.
  - garganzol 6y ago
    Experimentation. Medicine is my life-long interest. Yes, the exact details are missing. But I gave a solid general advice. Not sure everybody can grasp it being blinded by their own cultural expectations (which are not 100% true after all).
    - michaelcampbell 6y ago
      How many double blind experiments did you do with a control group with/without masks? O2 sat levels from any tests I've seen aren't affected by masks, so I'm more than a bit skeptical here.
      - garganzol 6y ago
        No tests, sorry. I would gladly make some statistically significant experiments, but I am not in professional medicine. I am more math/computer/physics guy by trade. From math/physics perspective: mask has a porous structure and stands in a way of the air. So it is clearly adds some resistance to overcome with an additional suction. Healthy people can provide that suction, so their O2 remains untouched. Not-so-healthy people may hit the physical limit of their suction and this is the situation when adding an additional barrier (the mask) will lead to O2 decrease.
loopz 6y ago
Just wait until the professionals start referring to psychological help. Chronic health problems from previous infections do not exist in modern medicine. Besides there's very little professional help to get. I believe we can reasonably expect this to develop into massive amounts of people unable to work due to ME/CFS. The effects may last for life. There are courses where they tell you to lie to yourself and say you're healthy ("lightning process"). The breaking of personal boundaries can unfortunately for sufferers lead to permanent health and capacity reduction, so take with big grains of salt wether it's worth the risk. What may work, if it's ME/CFS-like, is to find personal limitations and avoid too much toll, ie. less or no stressful exercise. Then find ways to live healthier and gently up those boundaries without exertion, avoiding possible permanent regressions for life. Of course also seek professional medical help, but always evaluate what kind of help one is getting where and what the consequences are. Life can and should be joyful and one should shed fear and anger, but be sceptical of claims (even this one), and do due R&D.
- PaulKeeble 6y ago
  Since they classed the first known outbreak of ME as mass hysteria its been constant gaslighting for sufferers for 70 odd years. Even now this article is written as if ME/CFS doesn't exist, as if doctors in the UK are completely baffled, but we know what this is and it will have the same hallmark Post Exertional Malaise but its not even mentioned in the article. The NHS doesn't recognise the international definition of the disease and continues to harm patients that show up with it every day. The Chinese after SARS didn't have issues calling it ME/CFS, around 10% of the SARs sufferers still suffer with ME/CFS to this day, they had papers calling it what it was very early on. The NHS however is going with "no clue". We do know a lot more than we knew 2 years ago. We know the condition swells the brain in the central and front regions and that explains the memory problems, headaches and coordination issues. We know that sufferers have virus RNA in their body and in their brains, so its possible its just an ongoing infection but it also appears to be partially replicated in cells. We know that patients cells produce down to about 25% of the energy that a normal persons cells do in their mitochondria and it is at least partially to do with the Calcium ion channel being turned off with a gene switch. A sufferers plasma will shut down someone else's cell too so its probably a signal of some description in the immune system soup. What we don't know is if any of this is the root cause of the condition and there is frighteningly small amounts of research being done for a disease that can be as debilitating as MS. We know a lot about how its not Psychological now and research is getting funded at last. But its been 70 years of "its all in your head", nothing about this condition paints doctors and researchers at all in a good light.
hellofunk 6y ago
You’ve pretty much exactly described someone I know who caught the virus at the end of March as well. Approximately 40 years old, and healthy, and currently is exhausted from climbing one flight of stairs. She finally started leaving the house just a couple weeks ago. It’s been a very very gradual improvement over time, so I suspect that eventually it will go away. She’s been getting some physical therapy to help get her body moving and gradually become more active.
amalcon 6y ago
So sorry to hear about your wife. This is an incredibly scary disease for a lot of reasons. Adding the frustration of a chronic condition to that is not what anyone needs. The basic problem is: What do you do about a chronic condition for which there is no proven treatment? I have a few people in my life with one such condition or another. There are three responses, mostly unhelpful. The most common response is to essentially suggest things at random. Both rest and (generic) exercise are common suggestions. This can make the patient happy, but it's often actively harmful -- obviously, both rest and exercise won't help the same thing, unless it's a specific exercise chosen with the condition in mind. The other common response is to not suggest anything, and basically try to get the patient to go away. If you're lucky, they'll try to sympathize, but mostly you'll just get brushed off. This makes the patient feel bad, but at least it won't actively make the condition worse. The response you'll get if you're really lucky, is that they'll refer you to participate in a study of some kind. This is lucky because it's very high variance: it could kill you, but it also could significantly improve things. Obviously that risk isn't for everyone, but it's lucky to even have the choice. Unfortunately, without a proven treatment, there isn't a lot else for doctors to do.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  > Unfortunately, without a proven treatment, there isn't a lot else for doctors to do. Figure out a treatment? Or at least establish what is actually wrong?
  - t_von_doom 6y ago
    I'm fairly certain that people are indeed working on a treatment, but until it's ready what do you propose?
  - yencabulator 6y ago
    > Figure out a treatment? That'd be the "refer you to participate in a study" part. Your average medical practitioner does not do research. > Or at least establish what is actually wrong? How? Based on what? That's the whole point for something like this; the medical consensus does not know how to diagnose it.
sjg007 6y ago
Post viral syndrome is a thing and may be a covid thing too.
DanBC 6y ago
> The most infuriating part is how little help there is from medical professionals. She's now 4 months in with what can only be seen as a chronic health problem, but the only medical advice doctors will give her is to rest. They're still trying to understand what's best. You could try looking into the type of rehab that some sepsis patients go through, because that's an emerging treatment in the UK. See for example this comment from a UK doctor: https://twitter.com/SepsisUK/status/1283316617615683584?s=20 https://twitter.com/SepsisUK/status/1283316617615683584?s=20
- DanBC 6y ago
  Here's more information for people looking for help with long term recovery from covid or sepsis, from the UK Sepsis Trust. https://www.youtube.com/user/TheUKSepsisTrust/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/TheUKSepsisTrust/videos
dennis_jeeves 6y ago
StevenWaterman , 2 questions: - I assume that you yourself never became sick during this period, despite being in close proximity to her? -Did you wife have other preexisting conditions?
- StevenWaterman 6y ago
  I was essentially asymptomatic. I had a tiny bit of vertigo and stomach problems for a couple of days, but I only noticed when looking back. She had incredibly mild asthma but didn't need an inhaler (and does now). Other than that, nothing.
wolco 6y ago
When the answer is not simple or require new thinking your local gp doctors are not the group to ask.
spanktheuser 6y ago
My sense is medicine has for some time neglected chronic symptoms from acute viral infection. During my lifetime, chronic fatigue syndrome went from a psychological malady confined to malingerers and depressed women to a physical malady associated with infection... but maybe also malingerers / depressed women. Which was where things stood when I contracted mononucleosis in my 40s. Weeks / months long fatigue and multi-organ involvement is characteristic of mono. In my case as the other symptoms slowly abated the fatigue remained, lingering over six months with some intervening flare-ups of fever etc. I learned that that this progression is considerably more common in older patients. Beyond that, little was known and my doctors reacted with a shrug and symptom management. There was no know cause to these symptoms. And seemingly to me considerably less medical interest. Perhaps Covid will yield a greater focus and fundamental understanding of chronic conditions resulting from viruses. However, given the contrast between the prevalence of CFS and attention paid... and the medical reaction to Lyme Disease I’m not entirely optimistic.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  I didn't know what to think of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but in the one specific instance of diagnosis I know of first hand, it preceded a diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer a bit later. Made me wonder if there could be a viral factor or something that leads to immune system problems that gradually develop over years.

_nalply 6y ago

Sorry for your experience. Because I am also the husband of a sick wife, I can relate to you. My own feelings swing between hope and despair and a dread of future is emerging. Realistically, what do you expect from medical professionals?

StevenWaterman 6y ago
I certainly don't expect a magic bullet that solves everything, but I would like it to be treated like any other chronic illness. A single point of contact to help track and manage her symptoms, a care plan to ease her back into life with the expectation that some symptoms will be here forever, and the hope that they won't.

H8crilA 6y ago

> The most infuriating part is how little help there is from medical professionals (...) the only medical advice doctors will give her is to rest I don't think it's bad will, they simply have no idea what to do. Just see what the research looks like: "they" are still busy categorising symptoms. Understanding of this disease is still in early stages. It will improve. Mind boggling how just a few months ago all my friends were throwing the 0.x% CFR numbers for our age group, implying that there is nothing to be afraid of. There's much so more complexity and many unknown unknowns in health!

StevenWaterman 6y ago
Yeah absolutely, they're doing their best with the information available to them. That's why I'm hopeful that all the recent news around persistent symptoms will improve awareness and make more resources available. It's a nightmare situation all-round and I have full sympathy for the situation doctors are in.
- kijin 6y ago
  Another problem is that most of the world is still too busy trying (and failing) to control the spread of infection. They don't have much attention to spare for people who aren't deemed infectious anymore.
  - annamargot 6y ago
    On top of that, downplaying the severity of covid is critical to the arguments of those who want this to be over for political, economic, or any reasons. The focus by many has been deaths. Mortality rate can be spun to make covid seem not so bad. If we start talking about the percentage of people whose lives are significantly affected, we create a much bigger percentage. If you’re trying to paint the opposite picture, it’s not in your interest to acknowledge or increase awareness of that percentage.
    - ThomPete 6y ago
      well tell that to the cancer, diabetes and high blood pressure ,depression victims who don't get diagnosed in time or havent gotten the proper treatment. Tell that to the people who's lifework have been destroyed and I could go on with people being significantly affected. Its not that simple.
      - wbronitsky 6y ago
        The suggestion that everyone who is pro- aggressive disease containment has not had their life turned upside down by the global pandemic is lacks logic. Shutdowns are necessary to contain the virus, and the economic damage done from not containing the virus is far worse than the alternative. We know this because we have data. There are multiple countries that were hit very hard in the first wave, and then managed to contain the virus and accelerate their economies after; France, Spain and Italy are all great examples. IIUC, France now has 3.6% unemployment. They had strict lockdowns, followed by mask wearing, social distancing, and contact tracing. The same tactics are working for NYC in the US. We do ourselves a great disservice to act as if virus containment is bad because it destroys economies. No, the virus destroys economies, and containment allows us to continue once mitigated. That’s what the data clearly shows.

script3r 6y ago

You should research Chronic Fatigue Syndrome / Myalgic encephalomyelitis. The medical community, from my experience, does not handle this type of diagnosis well. I’ve experienced post-viral fatigue symptoms that lasted well over 8 months, and almost all doctors I visited (ranging from primary care to neurologists) suggested simply rest and/or believed it was depression related (even though I have never suffered from depression before). I hope your wife gets better. Remission from these symptoms is possible, but sadly, I don’t think you’ll get more information out of the doctors.

hh3k0 6y ago
> The medical community, from my experience, does not handle this type of diagnosis well. I've read some time ago that Stanford scientists developed a blood test. It'll be harder for docs to ignore once there's a proper diagnostic tool.
- H_Pylori 6y ago
  >It'll be harder for docs to ignore once there's a proper diagnostic tool. Simon Wessely is already trying to cover is ass [0]. What a wonderful guy, he richly deserves his reputation. [0] https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-study-investigating-a-potential-biomarker-for-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-me/ https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-study-...
- rtp 6y ago
  Yeah, in its initial study, the nanoneedle had a 100% specificity and selectivity, and according to Ron Davis - main author - the results have held up as they've increased the number of tested people. That said it might also give a positive result for other illnesses. Hopefully a follow-up will be published soon.
  - dm319 6y ago
    Be wary of anything that claims a 100% sensitivity and specificity. It usually indicates the wrong gold standard or poor methods.

jessriedel 6y ago

I don't think we have any non-trivial treatments that are safe and effective enough to use on non-hospitalized folks. Until a patient's condition gets bad enough to justify risky/unpleasant interventions, rest and hydration seem like the proper prescription.

scawf 6y ago

I have the exact same experience. It took about 100 days before my wife could start working again, and she is still experiencing chest pain, breathlessness and fatigue (at first symptoms + 115 days). She was told to endure and rest. What a great plan.

watwut 6y ago
There is no other known treatment. Or basically no known treatment.
tenken 6y ago
I'm not a doctor, but I would argue against rest. By that I mean, endure ... sure, but focus hopefully on calisthenics, breathing exercises, yoga, taking supplemental vitamins and improving physical fitness. Typically post surgery doctors recommend PT ... I'm just saying start some regular PT post illness -- not "rest".

garganzol 6y ago

Based on my humble experience, I would suggest her to take the walks in the open air. Start from small, then gradually increase. Once she reaches at least 3 km per day, the walking activities should fully rejuvenate her ability to breathe. This should totally work out. The moderate activities and safe relaxed walks do the miracles for the usual post-pneumonia as well. Note of caution: avoid walking in masks. A mask impairs the natural ventilation and you would not get the recovery effect. This means you should keep a healthy distance and avoid getting into crowded places.

rbinv 6y ago
> Once she reaches at least 3 km per day, the walking activities should fully rejuvenate her ability to breathe. And you base that on what? Seems completely arbitrary. You don't know any details of her issues.
- garganzol 6y ago
  Experimentation. Medicine is my life-long interest. Yes, the exact details are missing. But I gave a solid general advice. Not sure everybody can grasp it being blinded by their own cultural expectations (which are not 100% true after all).
  - michaelcampbell 6y ago
    How many double blind experiments did you do with a control group with/without masks? O2 sat levels from any tests I've seen aren't affected by masks, so I'm more than a bit skeptical here.
    - garganzol 6y ago
      No tests, sorry. I would gladly make some statistically significant experiments, but I am not in professional medicine. I am more math/computer/physics guy by trade. From math/physics perspective: mask has a porous structure and stands in a way of the air. So it is clearly adds some resistance to overcome with an additional suction. Healthy people can provide that suction, so their O2 remains untouched. Not-so-healthy people may hit the physical limit of their suction and this is the situation when adding an additional barrier (the mask) will lead to O2 decrease.

loopz 6y ago

Just wait until the professionals start referring to psychological help. Chronic health problems from previous infections do not exist in modern medicine. Besides there's very little professional help to get. I believe we can reasonably expect this to develop into massive amounts of people unable to work due to ME/CFS. The effects may last for life. There are courses where they tell you to lie to yourself and say you're healthy ("lightning process"). The breaking of personal boundaries can unfortunately for sufferers lead to permanent health and capacity reduction, so take with big grains of salt wether it's worth the risk. What may work, if it's ME/CFS-like, is to find personal limitations and avoid too much toll, ie. less or no stressful exercise. Then find ways to live healthier and gently up those boundaries without exertion, avoiding possible permanent regressions for life. Of course also seek professional medical help, but always evaluate what kind of help one is getting where and what the consequences are. Life can and should be joyful and one should shed fear and anger, but be sceptical of claims (even this one), and do due R&D.

PaulKeeble 6y ago
Since they classed the first known outbreak of ME as mass hysteria its been constant gaslighting for sufferers for 70 odd years. Even now this article is written as if ME/CFS doesn't exist, as if doctors in the UK are completely baffled, but we know what this is and it will have the same hallmark Post Exertional Malaise but its not even mentioned in the article. The NHS doesn't recognise the international definition of the disease and continues to harm patients that show up with it every day. The Chinese after SARS didn't have issues calling it ME/CFS, around 10% of the SARs sufferers still suffer with ME/CFS to this day, they had papers calling it what it was very early on. The NHS however is going with "no clue". We do know a lot more than we knew 2 years ago. We know the condition swells the brain in the central and front regions and that explains the memory problems, headaches and coordination issues. We know that sufferers have virus RNA in their body and in their brains, so its possible its just an ongoing infection but it also appears to be partially replicated in cells. We know that patients cells produce down to about 25% of the energy that a normal persons cells do in their mitochondria and it is at least partially to do with the Calcium ion channel being turned off with a gene switch. A sufferers plasma will shut down someone else's cell too so its probably a signal of some description in the immune system soup. What we don't know is if any of this is the root cause of the condition and there is frighteningly small amounts of research being done for a disease that can be as debilitating as MS. We know a lot about how its not Psychological now and research is getting funded at last. But its been 70 years of "its all in your head", nothing about this condition paints doctors and researchers at all in a good light.

hellofunk 6y ago

You’ve pretty much exactly described someone I know who caught the virus at the end of March as well. Approximately 40 years old, and healthy, and currently is exhausted from climbing one flight of stairs. She finally started leaving the house just a couple weeks ago. It’s been a very very gradual improvement over time, so I suspect that eventually it will go away. She’s been getting some physical therapy to help get her body moving and gradually become more active.

amalcon 6y ago

So sorry to hear about your wife. This is an incredibly scary disease for a lot of reasons. Adding the frustration of a chronic condition to that is not what anyone needs. The basic problem is: What do you do about a chronic condition for which there is no proven treatment? I have a few people in my life with one such condition or another. There are three responses, mostly unhelpful. The most common response is to essentially suggest things at random. Both rest and (generic) exercise are common suggestions. This can make the patient happy, but it's often actively harmful -- obviously, both rest and exercise won't help the same thing, unless it's a specific exercise chosen with the condition in mind. The other common response is to not suggest anything, and basically try to get the patient to go away. If you're lucky, they'll try to sympathize, but mostly you'll just get brushed off. This makes the patient feel bad, but at least it won't actively make the condition worse. The response you'll get if you're really lucky, is that they'll refer you to participate in a study of some kind. This is lucky because it's very high variance: it could kill you, but it also could significantly improve things. Obviously that risk isn't for everyone, but it's lucky to even have the choice. Unfortunately, without a proven treatment, there isn't a lot else for doctors to do.

Aeolun 6y ago
> Unfortunately, without a proven treatment, there isn't a lot else for doctors to do. Figure out a treatment? Or at least establish what is actually wrong?
- t_von_doom 6y ago
  I'm fairly certain that people are indeed working on a treatment, but until it's ready what do you propose?
- yencabulator 6y ago
  > Figure out a treatment? That'd be the "refer you to participate in a study" part. Your average medical practitioner does not do research. > Or at least establish what is actually wrong? How? Based on what? That's the whole point for something like this; the medical consensus does not know how to diagnose it.

sjg007 6y ago

Post viral syndrome is a thing and may be a covid thing too.

DanBC 6y ago

> The most infuriating part is how little help there is from medical professionals. She's now 4 months in with what can only be seen as a chronic health problem, but the only medical advice doctors will give her is to rest. They're still trying to understand what's best. You could try looking into the type of rehab that some sepsis patients go through, because that's an emerging treatment in the UK. See for example this comment from a UK doctor: https://twitter.com/SepsisUK/status/1283316617615683584?s=20 https://twitter.com/SepsisUK/status/1283316617615683584?s=20

DanBC 6y ago
Here's more information for people looking for help with long term recovery from covid or sepsis, from the UK Sepsis Trust. https://www.youtube.com/user/TheUKSepsisTrust/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/TheUKSepsisTrust/videos

dennis_jeeves 6y ago

StevenWaterman , 2 questions: - I assume that you yourself never became sick during this period, despite being in close proximity to her? -Did you wife have other preexisting conditions?

StevenWaterman 6y ago
I was essentially asymptomatic. I had a tiny bit of vertigo and stomach problems for a couple of days, but I only noticed when looking back. She had incredibly mild asthma but didn't need an inhaler (and does now). Other than that, nothing.

wolco 6y ago

When the answer is not simple or require new thinking your local gp doctors are not the group to ask.

spanktheuser 6y ago

My sense is medicine has for some time neglected chronic symptoms from acute viral infection. During my lifetime, chronic fatigue syndrome went from a psychological malady confined to malingerers and depressed women to a physical malady associated with infection... but maybe also malingerers / depressed women. Which was where things stood when I contracted mononucleosis in my 40s. Weeks / months long fatigue and multi-organ involvement is characteristic of mono. In my case as the other symptoms slowly abated the fatigue remained, lingering over six months with some intervening flare-ups of fever etc. I learned that that this progression is considerably more common in older patients. Beyond that, little was known and my doctors reacted with a shrug and symptom management. There was no know cause to these symptoms. And seemingly to me considerably less medical interest. Perhaps Covid will yield a greater focus and fundamental understanding of chronic conditions resulting from viruses. However, given the contrast between the prevalence of CFS and attention paid... and the medical reaction to Lyme Disease I’m not entirely optimistic.

perl4ever 6y ago
I didn't know what to think of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but in the one specific instance of diagnosis I know of first hand, it preceded a diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer a bit later. Made me wonder if there could be a viral factor or something that leads to immune system problems that gradually develop over years.