My experience of living with a long nerve COVID

After being deployed in the COVID ward, I was infected with COVID-19 at work. I wasn’t surprised when I was in close contact with a COVID-positive patient and wore only basic personal protective equipment (PPE), and the next week when I started to feel sick. PCR test Returned a positive result.

The acute phase of the illness lasted two weeks and was comparable to mild to moderate. influenza: It is unpleasant but expected. A healthy and healthy 35-year-old with no complications, I was hoping for a simple and immediate recovery.

The third week is, except for a long time heat, I mistakenly thought I was recovering. At the beginning of the fourth week, I got back to work, but it didn’t last long in the ward round. I was crazy and jelly-footed, so I went home.I now know this is the beginning of Long COVID..

It quickly got worse at home.I became TachycardiaAt 140 beats per minute (bpm), you are out of breath and have a resting respiratory rate of 20-24. My heart rate increases to 170bpm while standing, with minimal effort such as drinking a drink or using the bathroom.

I began to make periodic attacks of pins and needles on all limbs and violent whole body tremors. The shaking was as intense as a seizure, but it wasn’t because I was aware of it.

Seizures were associated with unquenched thirst, with or without an urgent need to open my bowel, vomiting, or increased shortness of breath. They came in a daily cycle that lasted up to 14 hours at a time. I was shaking frequently all night.

“I was dysregulated — I suspect it was neurologically driven — heart rate and breathing rate. Physically, I was on a treadmill that I couldn’t get off. I know from this experience that I have a lot of trauma. “

In those first few weeks, my airways felt narrow. I was breathing fast, but I also felt like I was breathing through a straw.Past experience has recognized oral inflammatory airway stenosis Prednisone And fexofenadine (Allegra).

I went to the emergency room. So my symptoms were rejected and misdiagnosed as anxiety. The registrar I saw saw sinus tachycardia, hearing “periodic attacks” and “pins and needles.” electro-cardiogram, Then combined the dots in the wrong order.

He expected to see a moody chest x-ray, but when this became apparent, he chalked my symptoms to either long COVID, anxiety, or reflux.

“Despite the long COVID differences, I was treated like an anxious girl. Despite being a doctor myself, my concerns were not taken seriously. I told him He said his diagnosis was wrong and he felt very sick. But my time was over, he had a poor patient to see, and to him I wasn’t poor The nurse brought me a wheelchair and I was taken out of the emergency room. “

It turned out that COVID-19 was the cause Postural tachycardia syndrome, Or POTS, physical condition Autonomous system Therefore, the ability to adjust itself is compromised.

father, Some studies Also reports about Neurological symptoms It is associated with SARS-CoV-2 and involves both the peripheral and central nervous systems.

At home, numbness, intense tremors, and shortness of breath continued. I experienced an episode of consciousness change, Sleep apnea.. My body woke me up from sleep or the edge of sleep, and after a brief break I was out of breath and gasped.

It was as if my body had forgotten how to breathe. At this point, I suspected that something central was wrong and realized that I was poor, even if no one else did.I have no doubt Brain stem Involvement. At this time, I experienced an imminent sense of fate. It can only be expressed as an emotion that is felt as a physical sensation in the chest and drags you down.

Sleep was disturbed. I felt unparalleled mental, physical and emotional fatigue, but the virus or my body’s reaction to it greatly awakened me.

After 72 hours without sleep, I experienced a secondary hallucination insomnia.. When I got a glass of water, I “heard” Tannoy calling me to my platform, while a man angry and “screamed” at me from the corner of the room.

From December to January, seizures of numbness and severe tremors did not decrease in severity, but in frequency and duration. They finally ended in mid-January. At that point I thought I had overcome the worst. I was wrong.

Throughout January, February and March, my right cerebral hemisphere was numb and inflamed.I also had an immeasurable experience Ear pain, Or ear pain. The pain felt much deeper than the pain of a bacterial ear infection, like the “hot poker” sensation deep in my ears.my Vestibulocochlear nerve It caught fire.

“I started to hallucinate. I had hallucinations five out of seven days a week for a couple of months. Music, band performances, news reports, political broadcasts, etc. all heard from inside my ears. I’ve been. My sleep was still disturbed, but these hallucinations weren’t secondary to lack of sleep. When I was lucky enough to fall asleep, I experienced a night wonder. An obstructive dream. “

Hallucinations occurred in addition to COVID-induced Tinnitus And deeper brain noise.I experienced hyperacusis and seizures dizzy.. I couldn’t stand the light and noise, so I had to close my eyes and lie down on the bed.

I became emotional. For months I said I felt unstable. Subsequent episodes of mood and speech disorders were late, stuttering, slurred, and harder to find words than usual, which I did, but was misdiagnosed by a long COVID care team. I think it was misunderstood.

He expressed concern about neuroinflammation, but with the recent death of his maternal grandmother, depression and anxiety are closely linked, and of course everyone mental health The problem that went through what I had.

Therefore, mental health was introduced in order to take a “holistic approach”. I appreciate the value of the holistic approach, but there are organic pathologies that require rapid investigation and medical management.

When he met a neurologist around May, he suspected the limbic system. encephalitis But as the hallucinations stopped, I believed it was showing signs of “burning out.”

Throughout April, May and June, my brain was no longer inflamed, but it didn’t feel right. When I touched my head, I felt that the right side was different from the left side.

However, this strange sensation was confined to the right parietal and right temporal lobes, not globally. When the correct parietal lobe position flared, I associated speech with episodes of mood disorders.

When the right temporal lobe flared, my ears hurt and my tinnitus worsened. Tinnitus has a real emotional reaction because it’s something I can’t handle well. Subsequent hearing tests Deafness..

Where am i now After 10 months, I’m improving, but I’m still sick.

Neurology has diagnosed limbic encephalitis, and my brain still feels it is recovering from this insult. My mood remains fragile. Over time, episodes of extreme emotional reactions are diminishing. I want to believe that the more healed the brain, the better the hearing. I still hope the tinnitus has completely subsided.

Autonomic imbalance I’m improving, but I’m still a little dysautonomia. For 10 months, the resting heart rate was 90-110 bpm, but it rises to 120 bpm when standing, or to 160 bpm with minimal exercise.

But two weeks ago, my resting heart rate dropped out of nowhere. I am currently experiencing tachycardia attacks at rest, rather than always having tachycardia. Even minimal exercise, such as movement around the house, can cause tachycardia, and I still randomly desaturate.

But the episode Acrysia nosis, Poor circulation, or Raynaud It doesn’t happen anymore in my feet, and episodes NocturiaExcessive urination at night, is less frequent.

Functionally, I’m very tired, Fatigue after exercise.. Except for going to the hospital and vaccination, I haven’t left home for 10 months.

“It’s not an exact explanation to say that you’re tired. It’s not just tired. As a doctor, I’m used to working on my feet for 14 hours. This is a person. It is not something that can be penetrated. “

Physically it feels like something is wrong at the cellular level, mitochondria are not functioning properly.There is increasing evidence to suggest that mircroemboli When Hypoxia It may be secondary to endothelial dysfunction.

Most days, I manage to prepare three meals a day, change clothes and wash. During this time, I am actively resting. There are days when I don’t always manage it. However, at first I couldn’t sit in bed or use the bathroom on the stairs, and then I noticed that it slowly improved over time.

I haven’t watched or driven TV for 10 months. I’m still not in the mood enough to try driving.

I’m having a hard time concentrating and I keep the gas in or the faucet moving, but I feel I’m starting to be more careful. To a friend, I recently likened it to a drunken state.

When you are drunk, you do not understand how drunk you are until you start to calm down. I’m “drunk” for months. As time goes on, I’m calming down and starting to look back on how sick I was.

I also feel angry and disappointed with the government, Public Health England, and my employer. Hand washing and a simple face mask were sufficient, as the proper PPE was not provided and instead the virus was given the false explanation that it spreads only by the movement of droplets.

This requires an aerial PPE containing an FFP3 mask for complete protection, despite the overwhelming evidence from the beginning that the virus is floating in the air.

According to former Secretary of Health and Welfare Matt Hancock, 1,500 health workers still died later. 122,000 Healthcare professionals have a long COVID and national guidance on PPE has not changed. This is an insult to the dead and injured.

Like others with long COVIDs, I still experience myriad other symptoms — every few days I sore throat, Sneezing, speckled vision, blurred vision, increased visual impairment such as increased floater, intermittent diarrhea, And the rest.

“I know I have a long COVID experience, its impact on my body, and a lot of trauma surrounding a series of poor medical encounters. I often like a dissociated dream. The world is realistic, but the edges are blurry and somehow unrealistic, just like when you’re drunk. “

I am worried that the severity and prevalence of long-term COVID may be underestimated. Share my story in the hope of raising awareness of the long COVID and its implications. There is an urgent need to understand the etiology of this condition, which I think is multifactorial, and there is an urgent need for treatment. While waiting for treatment, many people with long COVIDs continue to suffer and feel forgotten.

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