A teenager in the Valley is still battling COVID-19 symptoms more than a year after contracting the virus.
Lydia Pastore, a 16-year-old girl from Red Mountain High School, became incredibly ill in February 2020. In the last year, she has experienced intense fatigue, body aches and a number of other symptoms, from burns to eyes and face to hand. tremors.
“This was the worst illness I have ever endured in my life,” Lydia said. “There was constant pain and muscle fatigue, where I just can’t get rid of it. Going to the end of my road would exhaust me to the point of having to recover for two days.
Throughout the year, Lydia was affected by chronic fatigue, sleeping an average of 15 hours a day. After several visits to the doctor, she began a diary as therapy for the trembling of her hands, which turned into a method of tracking her own symptoms.
“I did a monthly symptom tracker, just because there were so many symptoms to keep track of,” Lydia said. “I wish I had such a resource at the beginning of my infection because every specialist I visited asked me, ‘What has changed? What’s new? What are the symptoms you are experiencing?’ it has always been frustrating to try to remember all this. “
Lydia decided to turn her affections into a chance to connect with other teenagers struggling with the long-term effects of COVID-19. She created the website chronicconnections.org, where teens can share their personal journey with COVID-19 and request a symptom tracking diary that Lydia sends for free to anyone in America.
“I hope it would be a place for teens to connect with others who are going through the same thing as them. To find comfort in similarity,” said Lydia, who has already received four letters from teens about their struggles. “I’m already so happy with these four stories I’ve had so far and given these magazines, but I feel like there are so many teenagers out there.”
What is “Long COVID?”
Lydia said she saw eight different health professionals find out why she was still experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 a few months after the illness. His tests for Valley fever came back negative. Although she has never been tested for COVID-19, her doctors believe that Lydia has “long COVID” when a person has symptoms of COVID-19 long after they have contracted the virus.
“This post-viral syndrome occurs when you’re done with the initial infection, but for some unknown reason, we continue to have some of the symptoms you’ve had before for a period of time that doesn’t make scientific sense. Said Dr. Gary Kirkilas, a spokesman for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
For doctors, Lydia is considered a “long carrier.” Dr. Kirkilas said that once the virus is eliminated in long-distance carriers, there is a residual effect from COVID-19 that could be caused by low amounts of the virus that cannot be detected by COVID-19 tests, but that require however, a response from the body’s immune system. system. Another reason could be that the virus originally caused internal damage to organs that have not yet healed.
On Tuesday, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a new initiative to study “long COVID” to “identify the causes and ultimately the means of prevention and treatment of people who have had COVID-19 but are not recovers completely over a period of several weeks. “
According to the NIH, symptoms include fatigue, shortness of breath, “brain fog”, sleep disturbances, fever, gastrointestinal symptoms, anxiety and depression.
“The thing that separates them is this brain problem, this brain problem with this fog,” said Dr. Frank LoVecchio, ER physician at Valleywise Hospital. “In the hospital, we call it encephalitis (or inflammation of the brain). They can’t concentrate as well. They tend to be more forgotten.”
In December, the US Congress provided $ 1.15 billion in NIH funds to study the long-term effects of COVID-19.