![]() ![]() Short Wave What's It Like To Be A COVID-19 Long Hauler ![]() Pam Taub, a cardiologist who treats Minhas at UC San Diego. "Many patients do get better, significantly better," says Dr. The encouraging news is there are a host of medications and physical therapy that can help. POTS often comes on suddenly following viral infection, though there are also other triggers, such as a concussion, for instance. It was first named in the 1990s, though it existed – unrecognized – long before, experts say. POTS experts at other academic medical centers - including UC San Diego, where Minhas is being treated - also are reporting an uptick in cases. As part of the Johns Hopkins Post-Acute COVID-19 clinic team, he sees many patients who have POTS-like symptoms that need to be evaluated, though not all will be diagnosed with the condition. What is known, though, is that there is a backlog of patients waiting to be seen, Chung says. Experts say a small slice of people with long-haul COVID-19 have symptoms of dysautonomia, though its prevalence is unknown. found about 13% of people who had COVID-19 continued to have symptoms three months after their initial infection. They explained to her that an issue with her nervous system was causing her heart to race, usually upon standing - a signature feature of the syndrome - and the circulatory problems.Ībsolute numbers of long-haulers aren't known, but a recent survey in the U.K. The doctors told Minhas that they had begun to see other patients after COVID-19 who had developed similar symptoms. But for a subset of people with what's known as "long COVID" - mostly women such as Minhas - a POTS diagnosis offers a road map to treatment options and relief from their often-debilitating symptoms. "It was disconcerting," Minhas says, and "lingering way too long without a proper answer." But she persevered, determined to "dig in and look for answers."Īnd months later, in late 2020, a breakthrough: A group of cardiologists at the University of California, San Diego helped lead her to a diagnosis of a mercurial and little-known condition: postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, or POTS, a blood circulation disorder.Ī growing number of people are facing mountains of frustration over health problems that linger after COVID-19 with no clear path to improvement. At first, her primary care doctor thought it was anxiety. Yet doctors could not explain what was wrong. I used to play tennis and go to the gym," she says. Her symptoms became so severe that she stopped working. In addition, she continued to feel a tightness in her chest, and the brain fog was so intense at times, she says, she couldn't remember a four-digit code for her phone.Ĭoronavirus Updates People With Severe COVID-19 Have Higher Risk Of Long-Term Effects, Study Finds "I would wake up in the middle of the night with burning hands and feet, and I would look down and my feet would be bright red," Minhas says. The doctors couldn't find anything, Minhas says.Ībout the same time she developed another strange symptom that offered a clue to her condition. A normal heartbeat for an adult ranges between 60 and 100 beats per minute.ĭoctors ordered tests to rule out heart disease. "Just standing up to make a sandwich, my heart rate would be 120," recalls Minhas, a 54-year-old nurse who lives in San Diego. "I had profound fatigue," she says, along with brain fog, headaches and a rapid heartbeat, especially when she changed positions from lying down to standing up. In the months after she first got sick with COVID-19 in March 2020, Jennifer Minhas developed a cluster of mysterious symptoms. For months, she and her doctors struggled to understand what was behind her fatigue and rapid heartbeat, among other symptoms. Since then, lingering symptoms - what's known as long-haul COVID-19 - made it impossible for her to work. Jennifer Minhas had been a nurse for years when she contracted COVID-19 in 2020. ![]()
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