‘There are days you just can’t get going’
Fatigue, brain fog dog man in long COVID fight
Dan Manley remembers the day he was discharged from the hospital with COVID-19. As he walked out, the hospital staff had opened the door to the room next to his.
In that room was his father, also named Dan Manley, who was also fighting COVID-19. He’d arrived at Midmich- igan Health-alma two or three days after his son.
The two had communicated by phone, and the son, the executive director and president of Big Brothers/big Sisters of Midmichigan, possessed power of attorney and received regular updates on his father’s condition.
As Manley left, he had a con
versation with his father. It was the last time he or any of his siblings talked with their dad, who died a few days later.
“I think about that a lot,” Manley said Thursday.
Manley went to the hospital days into his bout with COVID-19 in July 2020. It was during a lull between the first big wave of April and May and the late fall wave that was the deadliest so far.
His fight with COVID-19 started with a general malaise. He couldn’t eat for more than a week, and when he got his oxygen tested in the emergency room it was right at the point for admittance to the hospital.
“I never felt so weak in my entire life,” he said.
There was also coughing, so bad that he had to sleep in a recliner.
After several days of trying to fight it at home, he said his wife told him he needed advanced medical care. His oxygen level was low enough that they nearly put him on a ventilator.’
“I went in and I was not good,” he said. “I was not good.”
Doctors told him he was lucky, he said. They’d learned some things about treating the disease during the first big wave, but there weren’t a lot of COVID-19 patients that summer. In fact, he and his father were the only two in the hospital.
Manley recovered after receiving plasma with live antibodies from someone who’d already survived the disease, he said.
“My thought was at that point, ‘I’ll do anything,’” he said.
That helped him get to the point where he could leave the hospital, but his struggle with the disease was far from over.
He went home with blood thinners to prevent blood clots from forming in his lungs. He also spent three months on oxygen at home.
For two-and-a-half weeks, he could stand for only half an hour at a time, he said. Then he’d need to lay down.
The fatigue hasn’t entirely gone away, either. Manley said he used to be able to walk to his pole barn and back with no trouble. Now he gets winded just walking to it.
That’s extended to getting out of bed, which he said has changed from an easy task to a sometimes difficult chore.
“There are days you just can’t get going,” he said.
He had brain fog for five to six months, and while that has faded occasionally he’ll have days where he said he just isn’t himself.
The bill for his hospital stay was $30,000 and he said he was looking at a $6,000 deductible. But, his insurance company covered that. But that wasn’t the only way he received support.
His employer told him he could expect to draw his full salary until he was recovered, and people in the community and from his family stopped by with supplies.
“I was taken care of in a lot of ways,” he said.
That includes the hospital staff.
“I was blown away by the treatment I got,” he said.
Manley had brain fog for five to six months, and while that has faded occasionally he’ll have days where he said he just isn’t himself.