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“Lord, please return my memory.”
During the months that Marilyn Walters struggled to recover from COVID-19, she repeated this prayer day and night.
Like other older people who have become seriously ill with the coronavirus, Walters, 65, describes what she calls a “brain fog.”
This sudden cognitive impairment is a common concern for older people who have survived a serious attack of COVID-19.
“Many older patients have a hard time organizing themselves and planning what they need to do to spend the day,” he said. Post COVID Care Center At Mount Sinai Health System in New York City. “They report that they are becoming more and more forgetful.”
There are many other challenges: overcoming muscle and nerve damage, improving breathing, adapting to new disorders, regaining strength and stamina, and dealing with the emotional sacrifice of unexpected illnesses. ..
Most older people survive COVID-19 and face these concerns to varying degrees. Even among the highest-risk age groups (people over the age of 85), only 28% of people with confirmed cases will eventually die. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (The actual mortality rate may be lower due to test gaps.)
Walters, who live in Indianapolis, fought for life in the intensive care unit, sedating violently on a ventilator for almost three weeks in March and April. Today she said, “I’m still really tired and sometimes I can’t breathe. When I’m walking, my legs sometimes wobble and my arms look like jelly.”
“Emotionally, it was hard because I could always do it myself, and I can’t do it the way I like. I’m really nervous and jerky,” Walters said. It was.
Young adults who survive the serious course of COVID-19 experience similar problems, but older people “have more serious symptoms and have more restrictions on what they can do,” Chen said. ..
Dr. E. Wesley Erie, co-director of the Center for Serious Diseases, Brain Dysfunction and Survival at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said: “Recovery is on the order of months to years, not days or weeks. Perhaps he will not fully recover at least half of the critically ill elderly patients a year after fighting the disease. I guessed it.
The sequelae of delirium (rapid and sudden changes in consciousness and mental acuity) can complicate recovery from COVID-19. Elderly people hospitalized for serious illness are often prone to unrecognized conditions, such as long-term immobility, isolation from family and friends, and sedatives to relieve pain agitation and narcotics. Become.
In the elderly, delirium is associated with an increased risk of loss of independence, dementia, and death. It can manifest itself as acute confusion and agitation, or featureless unresponsiveness and lethargy.
“Adults with COVID-19 and above have delirium rates in the 70% to 80% range,” said Dr. Babar Khan, Deputy Director of the Aging Research Center at the Regenstrief Institute at Indiana University. Walters Doctor.
Chicago documentary filmmaker Gordon Quinn, 77, believes he was infected with COVID-19 at a conference in Australia in early March. At the Northwestern Memorial Hospital, he wears a ventilator twice in the ICU for a total of nearly two weeks and remembers being “hallucinating,” a symptom of delirium.
“I remember vividly believing that I was in dire straits. I was paralyzed — I couldn’t move. I heard a TV snatch —” Law and Order: Special. Rebroadcast of the Victim Unit — and I asked myself, forever? ”Quin said.
Considering the degree of delirium Increasing evidence of neurological damage Kahn said he expects COVID-19 to show “an increase in the prevalence of ICU acquired cognitive impairment in older COVID patients.”
Erie agrees. “These patients will need to work on recovery urgently,” he said. He advised that the family should insist on ensuring rehabilitation services (physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, cognitive rehabilitation) after the patient leaves the hospital and returns home.
“Even at my age, people can still benefit from rehabilitation incredibly,” said Shirley Ryan Ability Lab, a rehab hospital in Chicago, after spending nearly two weeks at home for a few weeks. Quinn, who receives therapy, said. Today he can walk nearly two miles and feels back to work and almost normal.
James Taraganis, 72, from Indian Head Park, Illinois, also benefited from rehab at the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab after spending nearly four months in various hospitals in early May.
Taraganis had a complex case of COVID-19: his kidney failed and he underwent dialysis. He experienced cardiac arrest and was in a coma for almost 58 days while using a ventilator. He was found to have intestinal bleeding, multiple transfusions, and crystallization and fibrosis in the lungs.
When Taraganis began rehab on August 22, he said, “My whole body and muscles were atrophied. I couldn’t get out of bed or go to the bathroom. I was eating through a tube. I couldn’t eat. It was a solid food. “
After hours of treatment each day in early October, Taraganis was able to walk 660 feet in 6 minutes and eat what he liked. “My recovery-it’s a miracle. I feel better every day,” he said.
Unfortunately, the need for rehabilitation for most older people is often overlooked. In particular, Recent research It was found that one-third of the severely ill elderly who survived their stay in the ICU did not receive rehabilitation services at home after discharge.
“Elderly people living outside more rural and metropolises, where major hospital systems provide state-of-the-art services, are at very high risk of losing this potential recovery care,” said physiotherapy and rehabilitation. Said Dr. Sean Smith, an associate professor at the hospital. At the University of Michigan.
Sometimes, the most important thing to recover from a serious illness is human connection. This was also the case when Tom and Virginia Stevens in Nashville, Tennessee were hospitalized for COVID-19 in the late 1980s in early August.
Erie, one of the doctors, found that they were in separate rooms and were frightened and miserable. “I’m worried about my husband,” Virginia told him. “Where am I? What’s happening? Where is my wife?” The doctor said Tom asked, “I have to get out of here” before crying.
Erie and another doctor caring for the couple agreed. Being isolated from each other was dangerous for this couple, who have been married for 66 years. They had to be in the room together.
The next day, when the doctor entered the new room, he said, “It was the difference between day and night.” The couple laughed while sipping coffee in the bed that was pushed together.
“Both of them got better from that point on, and I know they were together because of their affectionate touch,” Erie said.
That doesn’t mean it was easy to recover. Virginia and Tom suffer from confusion, malaise, weakness, and anxiety after being hospitalized for two weeks and after being hospitalized for two weeks. Currently, they are in a new assisted home. This allows for outdoor visits with the family.
“Doctors told us that it would take a long time and never return to the place in front of COVID,” said Karen Krieger, daughter of Nashville. “But that’s okay. I’m so grateful that they experienced this and we can spend more time with them.”
