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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Anecdote: 3 weeks very ill, 6 months recovery in my case, and still every now and then days where I'm completely useless physically. For someone who is normally classed as 'hyperactive' the change in my life is remarkable. I'd love to have my old energy levels back.

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Have you noticed any mental changes? I've had similar physical effects to yours[0] but in addition I've got an overall fogginess and I find I am struggling with with my short-term memory.

[0] = I wasn't that ill when I got it, just a bit feverish for a few days - took 5 weeks until I got 2 consecutive negative tests to prove I was clear

Take a look at CFS, if it is longer than 6 months.

Look for a doctor who specialize in this disease

I had heard of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome before (also "ME" but I didn't know it referred to the same thing) but I never knew exactly what it entailed and that its symptoms were so aligned with "long covid". I will read a bit more about it then motivate myself to go to my GP (they speak Czech which I am ok with in normal situations but for specialized things like medical stuff it can be challenging!). But thanks for this, I proably wouldn't have considered CFS/ME as a possibility were it not for your comment.

Yes, absolutely, and that's the part that bugs me most but I've found that I can work around most of it. For instance, I'm a touch typist and used to be able to type nearly flawless, but now I have to proofread even the smallest communications because there typically will be a couple of obvious errors in it. Highly frustrating. Short term memory issues can be dealt with though note taking.

Now, who is to say that the two are related, this is obviously anecdotal and the one might have easily happened without the other, I had some pretty bad O2 dips though and before everything was fine. So for me the correlation is strong enough to believe there is a connection. But the physical aspect is so strong that for me that is 1:1 related for sure. The mental part is not such an easy to point out difference, it is far more subtle.

Fogginess is an excellent description by the way, that's exactly it.

I'm a bit relieved that it's not just me and that you've described nearly to a T some of the more annoying ongoing things - missing glaring errors and omissions in emails/text (or just leaving completely unfinished sentences that I started and told myself "I'll get back to this one after the next bit") is painful and I've also found that I've kept a LOT of notes and manage a lot of my time through bullet-pointed TODO lists.

You're right that this is anecdotal and as the saying goes the plural of anecdote is not data ... but in my case the change was pretty stark - I was ok, then I was ill, then I recovered and was no longer ill but I felt like my brain was half-asleep most of the time. It sounds like you were the same.

One possible thing is that I've in the past felt a bit mentally dull during times where I haven't done much intensive physical activity. And obviously with gyms being closed and amateur sport cancelled I've only really been able to go for hikes which isn't quite the same. So my one remaining hope is that things snap back into place a bit once this is over - but who knows.

In any case I hope for both our sakes we can figure out what's going on and how it can be alleviated (if not fixed entirely)

I'm using an old racing bike on a stand to keep in shape, that really helps.

edit: Case in point, and I only noticed it now, my previous comment reads 'though' when I meant to write 'through'. That's the sort of thing that happens much too frequently now.

Have you gotten any treatment for it?

FWIW the evms guide has a section about possible long COVID treatment.

https://www.evms.edu/media/evms_public/departments/internal_...

Thank you for posting that. So far the treatment has been mostly rest, what I've been told boils down to 'if there is neural damage then it will likely repair itself in time and if not there is nothing we can do about it'.

It's a pretty weird feeling, as if your sharp knife has suddenly gone dull, it is hard to describe the 'before' and 'after' because I'm both subject and observer but it definitely feels off.

The other day there was an article about Alzheimer's stages, and the first stage read like an exact description of what I'm experiencing. We'll see in some time if this is permanent, whether it heals or whether it gets worse. If it stays as it is that would be acceptable, if it heals that would be preferable and the third alternative is one I'd rather not think of.

I was in roughly the same boat. I got Covid relatively early in the US, late March / April. I was quite sick for most of a month. The weird part is that a low grade fever and other symptoms persisted for months and would come and go for weeks at a time, almost always tied to visits to a grocery store (happened three times, about ~5-7 days after visiting a grocery store, which was my primary exposure to such spreader environments). It felt like the virus being topped up, rebooted. To put it into perspective, I haven't had the flu in 20 years and never get sick for more than 2-3 days in a given year. My immune system seemed unable to kick Covid.

It took six months to feel back to mostly normal after the worst initial month of symptoms went away.

Hi Jacques, I’ve been reading your excellent comments for a long time. Sorry to hear you had such a painful experience with COVID. Hope you’re back to 100% soon.

It's been a pretty frustrating experience, but like with most health things you can't really force them so I will just have to accept it and keep going. And so far so good, the degree of impact is not such that I can not function, I just have to be a bit more careful and monitor my rest time better than before.

Thank you for the support.

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