Long Covid has had a brutal effect on the workforce, study finds
I have long covid.<p>I used to bike to the train so I could get to work and back again at the end of the day for a total time of being on the bike per day of over an hour. There&#x27;s a brutal hill to climb up to get to my house from the train and I did it every day.<p>1 month after getting the disease last February, I wasn&#x27;t able to bike to work anymore. I simply couldn&#x27;t get my air. I was able to bike immediately after getting over the disease, but over the course of the next month or so things got worse. I could barely get up the stairs.<p>I went to my general practitioner last March and he give me a prescription for heartburn (which had also magically become a problem when it wasn&#x27;t before) and a rescue inhaler, which helped. He told me to report back in 2 weeks if it was still a problem. It was. I reported a little later than 2 weeks; it was 6 weeks, but it doesn&#x27;t matter.<p>I live in Utah County, Utah. He told me to go up to Salt Lake, to the University of Utah hospital, 40 minutes north. They had a covid clinic up there. He got me an appointment to get up there in June. Apparently they had a backlog.<p>When I saw the nurse practitioner in Salt Lake, she said I probably had asthma and to go to a pulmonary specialist. She gave me a referral.  I was able to use that referral to get another appointment with the pulmonary specialist... in December.<p>So I waited 6 months and then had an appointment in December with the pulmonologist. During that time when I would go to bed my lungs sounded like pop rocks. Snap, crackle, pop. Wheeze, wheeze, wheeze. My throat was constricted so much that you could hear a whistling sound when I breathed out and in. It was hard during the day, too. I would climb a flight of stairs and my coworkers would ask why I was out of breath and sweating like I had just run a mile.<p>The time finally came to see the specialist. He appeared to be a venerable gentleman at the end of his career, with white hair and a polished demeanor. He gave me a new inhaler, which eventually helped,  and an extension of the heartburn prescription. I had new chest x-rays done and he ran a bunch of tests on me. I walked the hall a few times timed. They took my blood pressure before and after. I had to breathe into a tube really hard several times in different ways (spirography). All the tests came back normal. No asthma. He said he&#x27;s getting a lot of long covid patients where all the tests are coming back normal.<p>When I told him I had stopped biking because of covid he was incredibly surprised. &quot;Do you mean to tell me that you&#x27;ve stopped all physical activity?&quot; Said he. I said, &quot;Why do you think I&#x27;ve come here? My pulse is over 90 (100? Can&#x27;t remember) just sitting here. Look at me; I&#x27;m all sweaty.&quot; Replied he, &quot;But surely you are sweaty because you had to come up the stairs to get here.&quot; (The pulmonologist&#x27;s office was on the third floor). &quot;No&quot;, I said. &quot;I took the elevator.&quot; And for all that I owe the hospital a hefty bill because it was a specialist.<p>Well the pulmonologist recommended that I take pulmonary rehabilitation. Basically it&#x27;s physical therapy. The first time I went they said I had to start walking 6 minutes four times a day. Then I had to start walking or biking 10 minutes three times a day. I&#x27;m up to 12 minutes three times a day now, sometimes back on my bike, and it feels pretty good. So far this is what has helped the most. I don&#x27;t feel like I need the rescue inhaler anymore, I&#x27;ve stopped wheezing and pop rocking, and I notice less when I go up the stairs now.<p>But understand me when I say that people who think that long covid isn&#x27;t real are in a most enviable position. I can assure you, it&#x27;s real and it&#x27;s not fun. I remember biking yesterday and feeling so alive. Not being able to do that for so long has been really rough. You don&#x27;t know what you miss until it&#x27;s taken away from you.<p>Edit: it&#x27;s not depression, see my other comment: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=35176860" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=35176860</a>