NB Woman Diagnosed With ‘Prolonged COVID’ Tells Her Story of Pain and Anguish – New Brunswick | The Canadian News

A New Brunswick woman who has been diagnosed with “prolonged COVID” is talking about the long-lasting effects that COVID-19 has had on the quality of her life.

“There is constant pain 100 percent of the time,” Debby Clements said.

The 49-year-old from Shediac Cape spent four weeks in the ICU and nearly died of COVID-19 in the spring of 2020.

Eighteen months later, she still experiences shortness of breath, neurological pain, memory loss and emotional trauma after being diagnosed with what health experts call prolonged COVID, she said.

“Lots of therapy for PTSD that comes with being so ill for so long and still fear and anxiety,” Clements said.

Clements said that COVID has long had an emotional impact on her life. She can cautiously walk down the front steps, but she lacks the strength to reach the mailbox on the street and run and play with her five-year-old granddaughter.

“I wanted to take her for a walk on the beach, but I can’t walk more than a few hundred feet because I’m in so much pain,” he said.

According to a recent study by the University of Oxford and the National Institute for Health Research, at least one long-term symptom of COVID-19 was found in 37 percent of patients three to six months after being infected by the virus.

Clements said the condition has been a limitation on life in the most heartbreaking way.

“I couldn’t make pancakes with my granddaughter the other day because I didn’t remember how,” she said.

A Halifax doctor says that even patients who have had a milder case of the virus are being diagnosed as long-lasting carriers.

Dr. Christy Bussey is the Head of the Central Area of ​​the COVID-19 Inpatient Unit at QEII Health Services in Halifax.

“Patients who have had a very mild illness and never required hospitalization during their acute infectious illness and will have debilitating symptoms many months later,” Bussey said.

Bussey said it is not yet clear how many seafarers are suffering from prolonged COVID or how many will develop it in the coming months. She says symptoms range from mild to severe, with some people also feeling extreme exhaustion for months after recovering from infectious COVID-19.

“Everything from heart palpitations to extreme fatigue. It really is quite variable, ”Bussey said.

Bussey said doctors are still learning about the condition and that getting vaccinated is the best prevention.

Bussey said caring for long-term COVID patients in the coming months is going to put additional strain on the medical system, “especially within our rehab groups,” he said.

“When you think that primary care physicians and nurse practitioners are the first point of contact for these patients in the community and that they have the resources they need to be able to support those patients themselves or refer them to the right subspecialists,” she said that will be a challenge.

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