The long haul
Sonora man still suffers from COVID-19 related ailments months after initial infection
Dr. Artin Mahmoudi, a pulmonologist at Adventist Health Sonora, told 76-yearold Sonora resident Ted Michaud on Monday that his lung health was “improving greatly” following a 17-day hospital stay for COVID-19 nine months ago.
But Michaud has a syndrome which goes by many names: long-term COVID, POST-COVID syndrome, or clinically as post-acute sequelae of SARS-COV-2 (PASC).
Colloquially, patients with lingering ailments due to COVID-19 are known as “long-haulers,” meaning after he recovered from COVID-19 and could test negative, he still had debilitating and ongoing health problems related to the virus.
“I think folks who come down with the virus need to understand that some of these symptoms may stick around for a while,” Michaud said. “It’s just not a matter of getting better. This thing can get far more complicated and, if it gets more complicated, people die.”
Michaud first came down with COVID-19 in December, along with his wife Nancy, while in Las Vegas, Nevada, before their son’s wedding there.
Ultimately, he wasn’t well enough to attend. He was taken to a hospital by ambulance to Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center in Winchester due to shortness of breath and spent the night in the emergency room because they did not have any available beds. He tested positive for COVID-19 during the first visit and was discharged the next morning to bed rest. But the shortness of breath returned, and he was taken by ambulance, again, to the hospital.
He ended up isolated in the hospital’s lonely COVID-19 ward for 17 days.
The drive back to Sonora took three days, and Michaud realized that though he was negative for the virus, he was not fully well. During the drive, he still had shortness of breath, insomnia and zero appetite, he said.
Through June, Michaud dealt with recurring and debilitating symptoms.
After a night of “strange sleep,” between fatigue and wakefulness, he would have shortness of breath and a loss of appetite. This was happening every two or three days, he said.
“I suspected, just reading up on why things were lingering like this, that something was still wrong. I should have been over all that stuff,” Michaud said.
Johns Hopkins Medicine says mild to moderate COVID-19 often lasts for about two weeks in most people, but lingering health problems have been known to occur. In these cases, COVID-19 is no longer in the body, but patients can remain ill.
There are still many unknowns related to longhaulers, such as how long the ailments will last, what the most common ailments are, and why certain people have the long-term effects and others don’t.
Scientists studying the condition, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(cdc), do not know why certain patients — some of whom only had mild symptoms when positive for COVID-19 — have ongoing health issues after their “recovery.”
The CDC says common symptoms were difficulty breathing, fatigue, brain fog, cough, chest or stomach pain, heart palpitations, joint and muscle pain, headache, pins-and-needles feeling, diarrhea, sleep issues, fever, lightheadedness, rashes, mood changes, changes in smell or taste and changes in period cycles.
“Rapid and multi-year studies are underway to further investigate postCOVID conditions,” the CDC states on its website. “These studies will help us better understand postCOVID conditions and how to treat patients with these longer-term effects.”
Michaud has not suffered from ongoing muscle or joint pain, a common symptom for other long haulers. Still, the frequency of those bouts of illness leave him feeling depressed and isolated, he said.
“It really works away at your disposition to the point of depression. There’s no medicine for it,” he said. “The record is still being written on all this.”
By July, the cycle had spread out to more time between the symptoms, indicating improvement. He was now considered to be on the mend, but his biggest concern was becoming infected with the delta variant.
“You do not want to get COVID a second time,” Michaud said. “I don’t feel very well about it. I’ve got some underlying health issues, and it’s taken me a long time to get used to them. This lack of a real quality of life is really depressing, actually, and I hate being on guard all the time.”
Michaud had seen Mahmoudi since before the COVID-19 pandemic due to asthma, but “felt privileged” to continue to do so in the firestorm of infections
caused by the delta variant. On Monday, Mahmoudi was layered in masks and scrubs, and it was three weeks since a blood clot was discovered in Michaud’s lung.
Michaud said his three doctors have an “appreciation” for the long-hauler syndrome: Mahmoudi, the pulmonologist, Dr. Eric Hemminger, the cardiologist, and Dr. Kyi Kyi Win, his general practitioner. They all work in tandem at the various ailments which incapacitated Michaud in the aftermath of the virus.
So far, the focus has been on Michaud’s heart and lungs.
“The bottom line is inflammation. It either goes out of control and attacks the closest thing it can find, which is usually the lungs,” he said. “It’s kind of selective. I guess it kind of depends on variables they still haven’t identified. But if you have something wrong with you, it’s going to make it worse.”
Michaud said if he “had the strength,” he would demonstrate in downtown Sonora for the COVID-19 vaccine and for continued public caution regarding the virus.
“People should just not be taking any of this stuff lightly, and the worst thing in the world is making it a political issue,” he said. “This is all clouded in this freedom of choice stuff, but it’s something that involves all of us.”
Michaud received the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine in February and the second dose in March. He fell ill from the second dose and went to the hospital, he said, likely due to complications caused by defensive antibodies or the lingering effects of the virus.
“I’m part of that zeropoint-five percent that had something untoward happen,” he said.
He said he is “ill at ease” about warning immunity, and plans to research his eligibility for a booster shot when they are available.
Michaud and his wife originally are from Pleasanton but have lived in Tuolumne County for more than 16 years. His longtime profession was an educator and school administrator, and he noted his longtime employment with the School for the Deaf in Fremont.
As a retired state employee, Michaud has not had an undue financial burden put on him in the treatment of the lingering symptoms. Others may not be so lucky, he said.
Health experts say that the best way to avoid COVID-19 long-hauler syndrome is to avoid contracting COVID-19 in the first place. They recommend the use of a COVID-19 vaccine and various measures such as masking or social distancing to not contract the virus.