Kind: captions
Language: en
it's the worst thing in the world to be
thinking about
where you need to place your children in
the event that something happens to you
we raced to the er in galveston texas
because i had difficulty breathing
hurt to talk i was a
active healthy person my quality of life
is still
severely uh impacted from this
more than nine months after being
treated for covid19
epidemiologist dr margot gage whitfeli
is still experiencing lingering effects
of the virus
at one point i had to use a cane to get
around
if i walk to the kitchen i would forget
what i was going there for
i had forgotten my daughter's birth
dates at one point
she considers herself a coven long
hauler
a term used to describe persisting
symptoms or new complications
that occur weeks or even months after a
coven 19 infection has passed
long haulers commonly describe trouble
breathing
cognitive and neurological issues we
expected that with every viral infection
you get
some lingering kind of symptoms that
patients would have
but the extent of and the different
varieties of
syndromes that we've seen that is
unprecedented for many other viral
infections
the number of people experiencing
lingering symptoms from the coronavirus
is unknown
but researchers estimate that millions
of americans could be affected
and even if only one percent or even
less than one percent of patients are
affected by covid long
that's a lot of patience and it's not
only those who had trouble breathing
during their initial infection who are
suffering
lasting effects of the virus that came
to us as a real surprise
so some patients can have very little
lung symptoms and then come down with
all these neurological symptoms after
that
symptoms like the persistent loss of
smell and taste
vision changes numbness tingling
and muscle pain so i woke up with like
extreme left-sided weakness like i could
barely balance on my own
i couldn't hold my dog's leash in my
hand my vision was spotty
felt like you're looking through swiss
teas where you're like you can only see
a little bit of the picture
riley barons was hospitalized after
testing positive for covid
doctors told him he had likely suffered
a transient ischemic attack
or a mini stroke when he said stroke
like a mini stroke
i laughed and i was like dad i'm 23 like
this isn't real the doctor's wrong
covet is doing things to people that
nobody would have ever imagined
researchers aren't sure to what extent
the virus can enter the brain
or directly attack the nervous system
causing these
neurological symptoms but it's possible
the immune system doesn't return to
normal after the infection is cleared
triggering an autoimmune response i
think the
immune dysfunction is certainly a major
part of this
syndrome now viruses are very clever
and they don't have all the machinery to
survive by themselves so they have to
survive in the host
so in order to do so they co-opt the
host's machinery
it's not unusual that some parts of the
virus may resemble that of the host
if the immune system starts mistaking
self for something foreign then you end
up with this
autoimmune reaction in other words our
immune system gets confused and instead
of just attacking the virus and other
foreign invaders
it might actually start attacking
healthy cells
some symptoms of long covet overlap with
a chronic illness
called mecfs which has been linked to
sars
symptoms like memory loss confusion
fatigue or
post exertional malaise i i run out of
energy almost as if i'm an electrical
device
and with no backup battery and somebody
just pulled the cord out and that's it
i beat oh i've got nothing more
in me there are still a lot of unknowns
about the permanent and long-term
effects of covin
but other coronaviruses like sars and
mers
have left survivors with persisting lung
damage it's too early to know
what the long-term consequences might be
and if there's permanent damage to the
brain or other
neural structures we do worry that there
will be long-term
consequences and these patients not all
of them will recover completely
nearly a year into the coronavirus
pandemic a path forward for those
affected is still
unclear a lot of us are going to be
having
issues for a really long time and i
think that there's a lot more of us
than we realized are there patients
actually
suffering who think this is normal i
actually wonder a lot
is that going on especially in our more
vulnerable communities