Courtesy of Ann E. Wallace
The author during her fifth trip to the emergency room due to COVID-19 in July 2020.
As I went to bed on New Year’s Day, I sighed to myself, “I just don’t know .” My fiancé Konstantin, who I thought was fast asleep, lifted his head and asked what I meant. Embarrassed to have been caught in a solipsistic moment, I quietly finished the thought, “. if I will ever get better.”
COVID-19 entered my home a year ago today when my 16-year-old daughter Molly first developed the tell-tale cough. By March 17, 2020, my symptoms had begun. Molly recovered almost entirely after three weeks, but I’m still sick, and that makes me a COVID long hauler. Jan. 1, 2021, was a particularly difficult day for me: My joint and muscle pain, which had been escalating since summer, reached a level of agony and was coupled with intermittent tachycardia and shortness of breath, digestive problems, migraine, and overwhelming fatigue.
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They are now being studied by University of Dayton Assistant Professor of Psychology Julie Walsh-Messinger and Noah Greenspan of the Pulmonary Wellness Foundation.
Dr. Greenspan and Dr. Walsh-Messinger are studying the effects of a combination of treadmill exercise and oxygen therapy to improve the mental and physical health of participants. Many long haulers suffer from exercise and activity intolerance and/or post-exercise malaise and inflammation, but there are ways we can work around these systemic challenges, says Greenspan. By quieting these inflammatory responses using both exercise and supplemental oxygen, we are seeing people’s exercise tolerance and symptom burden improving and in many cases resolving completely.
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