Honestly, I feel very lucky to be as functional as I am. I do worry about how medical and political systems are responding to COVID and long COVID, but largely I think good care is going to come from the bottom up and not top down. I'm comfortable(ish) with a reality that I might just suddenly drop dead tomorrow, but this experience has given me a new appreciation for the health I have that I could not have fathomed before. Because I can alleviate symptoms with diet and directed exercise and it does appear to have a cumulative effect on their reduction, I think recovery is possible without intense intervention. I don't even mind being more spacey and a bit dumber. It suits me a bit and has changed the pace of my life in a way that once I embraced has been good.
My biggest worry is that if I suddenly die and how devastating that would be for people that depend on me, but I think without an infection of a new virus or several viruses I might live a shorter, but alright life. My chance of suddenly dying because I got light headed in an elevator now being slightly higher than my chance of being crushed by a vending machine.
Thank so so much for this. Very useful information.
One of my inner ear canal output signals dropped by about 75%. There is a diagnostic test they can do; more basic tests showed nothing but this more sensitive one showed it clear as day. No-one can tall me WHY the nerves are outputting a weaker signal and I couldn't tell you if it's related but it's something that doesn't get checked much.
If you had the information available, I'd be very interested to know the names of the diagnostic tests you took. Analysis of how I'm hearing is something I'm uniquely able to analyze over time and compare to medically conducted tests. While I think I know how the second test might have worked, I don't know what I'd call such a test to look for it.
I think analysis of hearing on newly infected to post care of people with COVID and Long COVID could provide useful hints that most other methods might not be able to detect.
It identified not just the issue but the actual specific structure that was giving me issues.
This has no impact on hearing, so wouldn't be caught by those tests.
I have no idea if it was anxiety or Covid, but the dizziness was disorienting, at the worst I couldn’t walk , it felt like I was on a boat. During this time I had anxiety attacks almost non stop-triggered by the vertigo. As soon as I started to notice the vertigo I would begin to spiral because it was so unprecedented and disorienting. It just cleared up on its own after 8 weeks.
Part of the vertigo was dizzy spells every time I stood up.
I had ~ptsd from it for a full year, every time I stood up I would brace for the vertigo ,
Hope you find some relief soon
[0]http://sanfordhealth.staywellhealthlibrary.com/Search/134,51...
Same thing can happen with EBV, where it is responsible for some flare up of symptoms post-infection, and chicken pox becoming symptomatic years after infection as shingles.
I wouldn't be surprised if long COVID symptoms are caused by latent COVID infections.
[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/07/170717091954.h...
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/persistin...
Here is but one such paper - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11695-022-06338-9
> Gastric specimens from 26 (32.5%) patients and 4 (100%) cholecystectomy [gallbladder removal] specimens showed positive cytoplasmic staining for the anti-SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein in surface mucosal epithelial cells.
> The median time between initial COVID-19 infection and surgery was 274 and 380 days in the positive and negative staining groups, respectively (p = 0.371). It's not clear whether these had any long lasting symptoms since infection.
> The inclusion criteria were a history of COVID-19 with one or more gastrointestinal symptoms [during the acute phase] and a negative PCR test result at the time of bariatric surgery.
There are literally dozens of these.
The problem is that most people don't get tissues resected from inside their body when their alive and most such tissues are not tested for the virus.
With regards to the general question of persistent corona viruses, just look at FIP in cats for another such example.
The only confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2 infections in humans lasting beyond a few weeks have been in immunocompromised patients. Their immune systems were able to somewhat suppress the virus, but not clear the infection. (There is a hypothesis that such patients were the sources for some of the variants because the extended infections gave the virus more time to evolve but that can't be conclusively proven.)
Thinking about this now though gives me some ideas that could even be testable that could help. Thank you for sharing this.
I got Omicron in January '22 despite being double vaxx'd, and I felt totally fine until 3-4 mo. later when I started to get recurrent dizzy spells, major fatigue, and bouts of anxiety, which are all very unusual for me. Checkup / bloodwork showed nothing. I am 41 y.o. who exercise regularly, does not smoke, rarely drinks, etc.
So far I can still function and maintain a job, but it makes me wonder what's going on inside of me that 11 months later it's still causing these issues regularly. Our 4 y.o. son got it as well and although he was asymptomatic I am still very concerned about what the long-term effects on him may be.
I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice, but I read a paper saying that hyperbaric oxygen therapy helped some people, so I've been using Wim Hoff breathing as a poor man's version. It does seems to help with the fatigue but not the vertigo. Best of luck.
Wim Hoff Breathing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tybOi4hjZFQ