I’ll share an abridged long COVID story about myself since it dearly affected me. Just so other people can kind of know what the experience was like. I got sic

I’ll share an abridged long COVID story about myself since it dearly affected me. Just so other people can kind of know what the experience was like. I got sick in October 2020 before vaccines were available. After the initial 10 days which I would describe as moderate, borderline severe (6/10, where 7/10 is hospital and 9/10 is ICU) I had all manner of absolutely weird things happen to my body. I won’t go into the details about the actual illness since the symptoms are well documented but suffice to say I had breathing issues and there was a lot of monitoring with the pulse oximeter First, heart pain. Stabbing in the chest. I got on colchicine and saw a cardiologist. That lasted probably 2-3 months before it finally went away. I had ekg and echocardiogram, both came up clean. Second, Reynauds. I live in Texas and it gets a little cold but not Nordic cold. For the first time in my life I had Reynauds symptoms during the winter and I lost feeling in my toes entirely unless they were submerged in hot water for multiple minutes. This happened many times that winter. Next, weird food allergies. Eating anything with gluten caused me to, I kid you not, have me in bed gasping for air for hours at a time. I ate a pizza in this time period and instantly regretted it and that continued for hours. More extremely strange circulatory issues: I wore a pair of running shoes for years and years before I got sick. I wore that same pair of shoes and it created lines and pain around my feet such that I went to the ER thinking it was a blood clot. No, it’s just that my tight shoes literally just bruised my feet for no explainable reason when they had never done that before. POTS. Standing up made my heart rate spike for no reason. This is a measurable phenomena for people who have autoimmune disorders called the tilt table test. Had this for months Everything luckily for me mostly went away within around 6 months. I had a lingering chest pain in breath that is now mostly gone that I genuinely thought I would deal with for the rest of my life. I think it’s basically gone now after almost 4 years. I’m a scientific dude. My conclusion after all this is that it’s autoimmune and that no one actually understands the mechanism which is why people who complain about this get dismissed. It’s easier for a doctor to say “it’s all in your head” than to admit that the current body of knowledge of medicine simply does not understand what is happening to people’s bodies. I wish and hope that so many people suffering from this stuff like I did changes that perspective a bit.