NEW YORK (AP) – COVID-19 came early for Catherine Busa, and it never really went away.
The 54-year-old New York school secretary had no underlying health problems when she contracted the coronavirus in March, and she was recovering at her home in Queens.
But some symptoms lingered: fatigue she never experienced during years she rose to work at 5 a.m.; pain, especially in her hands and wrists; an altered sense of taste and smell that makes food unattractive; and a welling depression. After eight months of suffering, she went to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center – to a clinic specifically for COVID-19 treatment.
“I felt myself in a hole and could not look on the bright side,” Busa said. She did not feel helped by visits to other doctors. But it was different in the clinic.
“They validated the way I felt,” she said. “It helped me push through everything I was fighting for.”
The clinic is one of dozens of such facilities that have sprung up in the US to address a strange aspect of COVID-19 – the consequences that some people can stubbornly suffer weeks or months after the infection itself subsides.
The approaches to the programs differ, but they aim to understand, treat, and trust patients who can no longer free themselves from the virus that infected more than 24 million Americans and killed approximately 400,000 people.
“We know it’s real,” says Dr. Alan Roth, who oversees the Jamaica Hospital Clinic. He struggles with body aches, fatigue and ‘brain fog’ characterized by occasional forgetfulness since his own relatively mild attack with COVID-19 in March.
Like so much else in the pandemic, the scientific image of so-called long-rangers is still evolving. It is not clear how common COVID problems are in the long run and why some patients continue to suffer while others do not.
Current indications are that up to 30% of patients still experience significant problems that end up in daily life two to three weeks after being tested positive. According to Dr. Wesley Self, an emergency physician and researcher at Vanderbilt University and co-author of a July report, said as many as 10% were still plagued three to six months later. of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Doctors have known for months that patients with intensive care can get long-term recovery. But very long carriers of COVID-19 were never critically ill.
At the University of Texas’ medical branch after COVID-19 in Clear Lake, patients range between 23 and 90 years of age. Half were never admitted to hospital, the director of the clinic, dr. Justin Seashore, said.
“They were told to feel better, and not,” he said. Instead, they had fatigue, shortness of breath, anxiety, depression, concentration problems or other problems they had not yet had.
Some have said that they should use oxygen for the rest of their lives. A highlight was helping many of them pick it up through treatment that could include respiratory therapy, occupational therapy, mental health check-ins and more, Seashore said.
Long-term care COVID-19 has been launched in environments ranging from major research hospitals such as Mount Sinai in New York, with more than 1,600 patients, to St. John’s Well Child and Family Center, a network of community clinics in south Los Angeles.
Instead of concentrating specifically on patients who are still feeling sick, St. John is planning a physical examination, a visit to behavioral health and monthly follow-up with everyone who tests positive at one of his clinics, said Jim Mangia, CEO. Nearly 1,000 patients came in for exams.
Since Luciana Flores contracted the virus in June, she has been struggling with back pain, stomach problems, shortness of breath and worry. The mother of three lost her job at a laundromat amid the pandemic, and she does not feel good enough to look for work.
St. According to her, John’s helped by diagnosing and treating a bacterial infection in her digestive system.
“I think it’s very important that other patients receive the same care,” Flores, 38, said through a Spanish interpreter. “I do not feel the same way. I think nothing will ever be the same, but there is no other way to do it: I have to keep moving forward. ”
There is no proven cure for long-term COVID problems. But clinics aim to provide relief, not least by giving patients somewhere if their usual doctor can not help.
“We wanted to create a place where patients could get answers or be heard,” even though there are still unanswered questions, Dr. Denyse Lutchmansingh, the clinical chief physician at Yale Medicine’s Post-COVID recovery program, said.
At the Jamaica Hospital Program, patients receive mental health studies, attention from a lung specialist, and physical examinations that delve deeper into their lifestyle, personal circumstances, and sources of stress. Several hundred people have been treated so far, Roth said.
The idea is to help patients build their own healing ability, says Dr. Wayne Jonas, former director of the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Alternative Medicine. He is now with the Samueli Foundation, a non-profit organization in California that works with the hospital to marry alternative ideas to conventional medicine.
The long-distance runners receive exercise and diet plans and group or individual mental health sessions. Recommendations for supplements, breathing exercises and meditation are also likely. This is in addition to prescriptions, referrals or primary care follow-ups deemed necessary.
“We are not just saying, ‘It’s all in your head, and we’ll throw you herbs and spices,'” Roth said. Without a neat, proven answer to the complex of symptoms, “we’re doing a healthy mindset approach and we take the best of what is there to treat these people. ‘
Busa got a test that determined that she had sleep apnea, which causes people to stop breathing while sleeping and often feel tired when they are awake. She gets a device for it and uses wrist braces and gets injections to relieve her pain. Her program also includes appointments on psychotherapy, supplements and new daily routines to walk, ride a stationary bike and write in a journal for which she is grateful.
Busa feels that she is coming along, especially as far as her mood is concerned, and acknowledges the clinic.
“There’s light at the end of the tunnel,” she said, “and there are people and doctors there who can relate to you.”