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While many people who get the coronavirus fully recover after a few weeks, some COVID-19 survivors are left with debilitating symptoms that last for months after infection.
They call themselves long-haulers, and they number in the thousands across the country. Their symptoms include brain fog, shortness of breath, fatigue, muscle weakness, heart palpitations, and mood and sleep disturbances. Many have been unable to return to their normal daily activities.
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One study found that 75 percent of hospitalized COVID patients still had symptoms six months after discharge. But long-term symptoms don't just affect those who were hospitalized; some long-haulers had only a mild initial infection, but continue to battle its effects months later.
Many are members of an online support group called Survivor Corps, where more than 155,000 adults share information, advice and encouragement.
In addition, specialized post-COVID clinics have opened across the country to collect data, study the condition and investigate ways to help long-haulers. It's a difficult task, because symptoms affect every system of the body, and also because cases can vary widely.
Here, four older adults share their experiences of being a COVID-19 long-hauler:
"The virus aged me 20 years.”
Christy Hutchison, 50, Woodland, Calif.
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Christy Hutchison believes she picked up the coronavirus when she traveled for work in March, just as the first COVID-19 cases were popping up in the U.S.
Fortunately, her illness wasn't severe, and three weeks later Hutchison was back to feeling like herself. To celebrate, she resumed her daily walking, logging 5 to 9 miles a day during the month of April.
"I was like, ‘Look, I've gotten through it, and I'll have antibodies now. I'm going to get myself healthy again,” Hutchison recalls.
Then, in early May, new symptoms appeared: A deep, hacking cough. Swelling in her feet and lymph nodes. Vertigo so bad she had to sleep sitting upright. And complete exhaustion.
"It was like an energy reserve had just been pulled out of me,” she says. A constant tightness gripped her chest. Her heart rate skyrocketed at unexpected times. “I'd be lying on the sofa, just watching TV, and my pulse rate would shoot up to 160 beats per minute,” she says. “I'd be terrified, thinking I was going to have a heart attack.”
Hutchison saw many different doctors, who ordered a variety of tests. She was examined, scanned, questioned and medicated.
One night in November, she awoke drenched in sweat, pain stabbing between her shoulder blades. She thought it was heartburn, but she also felt nauseous and vomited. Recognizing those as classic signs of a heart attack, Hutchison drove herself to the ER. But her chest X-ray, EKG and other tests all turned up normal.
"What's really terrifying is that after all this testing they can't say, ‘This is the problem and how we are going to fix it,'” Hutchison says.
It's now been almost a year since she was first infected. Hutchison says some of her initial symptoms have disappeared, but new ones have emerged. Her legs sometimes twitch erratically, and she gets migraine-like headaches. It can be a struggle to concentrate and think of words.
Hutchison lost her full-time job in private aviation when the company she worked for dissolved in December, so on the days that she feels good, she is job-hunting, as well as doing some contract work and supporting her two teenage daughters as they do virtual school. Sometimes she even has enough energy for a walk around the block and some yardwork.
On the bad days, however, she can barely get out of bed. For Hutchinson, who is normally a high-energy person, it has been devastating. “I feel like I'm disabled,” she says. “I can never run more than 85 percent of normal. This virus has aged me 20 years in a year."
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