I got OG Covid very early in 2020. I had something like a heart attack about six months later. It has not reoccurred. I suspect I had something kind of like a stroke a bit ago. The event was accompanied with very terrifying and specific neurological event. A loud noise that was only inside my head and unreal "sounding" that worked like a corkscrew from the right side of my head to the front while my vision dimmed. I legitimately thought I was about to die and was able to tell my partner so. It passed and I went to a doctor the following morning. More on that below. I've only noticed small motor function loss on my left side and some memory impairments. Since 2020 I have had what I call a "dinner plate in my chest". It goes away with some cardio exercise.

I can feel my vascular system radiating from the center of my chest up the sides of my neck and out through my shoulders. It's got a bit of a slow ache and upper body stiffness when it's flaring up. When it's bad, sometimes I wake up with numbness that radiates from my chest out to my finger tips on the top sides of my arms.

I have no problems taking deep breaths. The injury does not seem to be growing.

After the cardiac issue I had in 2020, my bloodwork showed signs that there was a possible event. My EKG was fine. This was days after. I have a constant dull to really shitty headache in the top front inside my head that has been persistent from the thing that seemed like a mini-stroke. I have never really had headaches without a serious hangover. I couldn't see my regular GP, still haven't been able to, but the doc I did see basically told me she thought it was vertigo and I needed to clean my ears. She checked my reflexes and some other things and said she could not recommend any further action without more events. I know what vertigo is. I've experienced it on accident and on purpose. I am not experiencing random vertigo. She did not seem to take anything I was saying seriously. She also told me she found it offensive that I was swearing while describing the experience and a gentleman would refrain from such language. I think she's a fucking moron, but she's functionally just as helpful as my curious, smart, and compassionate GP.

I'm 6' broad shouldered, and 210lbs. A bit chubby. I don't exercise a ton, but do some exercise, especially when the dinner plate flairs up. I don't smoke.

I've had a chest x-ray and it shows what looks like scarring in vascular structures radiating from my lungs. The forms kind of look on x-ray like the "ground glass nodules" that some people are experiencing. It's VERY hard to get a doctor that wants to do anything with me about this stuff. The fact that cardio makes things better and not worse is counter intuitive from traditional issues that look the same like Angina Pectoris. I've said since I recovered the first time (I've had it at least once more post vaccination but nothing was quite as near death as the first) that I felt cognitively and physically like I was 10 years older. I turn 40 next year. New research has been coming out showing that some people suffering from long COVID show aging of their CV systems of about 10 years.

It is going to take a long time to figure out what Long Covid is really doing to people. Some people that never showed symptoms get these things. Children are showing it too. The diagnostic criteria is really difficult and there is almost no treatment aside from some success with similar treatments used for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome[0]. I have found that most doctors don't want to touch it with a 200ft poll. The Red Cross says I should join an online support group[1]. A lot of the research is being done by scraping subreddits for people reporting symptoms because they vary so wildly and seem to have little correlation with the perceived severity of infection.

I suspect we may find a high correlation with exposure to heavy air born contamination. Like living in a very polluted city, exposure to lots of dust or chemicals, or living in a building with black mold for extended periods. The minor feeling or easy to ignore/temporary damage done by those experiences creating cellular damage that makes cells in CV systems pop like popcorn when COVID does its very unique number on vascular structures. The word Blood Foam was used once in a very early study on people who died from COVID. The images I remember from that study demonstrated that it is a pretty accurate term for what happens in the worst cases. I'm sure there are people with genetic properties that could just make them more susceptible as well.

I would also not be surprised if it ended up being correlated to heavy metals, dust/fiber, or fungal exposure specifically one or a pair of those things, even staggered exposure, being the biggest contributor. I expect that once its mechanisms are understood, the condition will not share a designation with other known pathologies. An interaction to an exposure and the damage certain coronaviruses do when given the right scaffold.

[0] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2020.60682...

[1]https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/03/31/after-covid-19-expe...