Katie Swanson, 29, Sunnyvale

Katie Swanson started feeling symptoms Feb. 22, around three weeks before the Bay Area went on lockdown, back when the coronavirus was far away and when no locals were thought to have died. The 29yearold chemical hydrologist was walking a 5K with her family in Sacramento when she started to feel really off, which wasn’t normal for her — Swanson is an Ironman triathlete who works out seven days a week. But her nerves were pulsing with pain throughout her body, and she had no idea why.

She assumed it couldn’t have been the virus — there was no way. That week, she worked a couple of parttime shifts at her gym’s day care. When she got home from the last one, she stayed in bed for four days. On March 9, she felt as if someone very heavy was sitting on her chest and choking her.

“It felt like I was getting hit with a sledgehammer,” Swanson said. Five days later, it felt like her sternum was broken and her chest was caving in. Panicking, she called her mom — and ended up in the ER.

As Swanson was led into the hospital’s special quarantine area, she finally entertained the thought that she might have the virus. Her friend’s business partner had been in Wuhan in January and got sick; the friend didn’t. Someone at her mom’s work had gotten sick. Swanson started taking off all her layers and asked for an ice pack to deal with the sweating. They did some tests and an Xray, then told her to go home and to get tested at a drivethrough clinic the following day.

Her terror grew when that test came back negative. “Up until (then), I thought that all medical tests were accurate,” she said. “I also believed that someone who was (29) couldn’t get COVID19.” Friends told her she was overreacting, that it was probably just allergies. But as her symptoms got worse, her doctor grew skeptical, and told her she believed it had been a false negative. She also told Swanson there was little anyone could do.

At home, Swanson was put on antibiotics and a nebulizer with two inhalers, but even doing something as simple as making food set her back. Then her mother got sick, too.

Fortunately, she recovered quicker to take care of Swanson, who lost her ability to walk and to talk without stuttering. At one point, Swanson’s face was turning blue and her eyes looked like she’d been punched. On April 3, she also tested positive for EBV for mono, something that confounded her even more. By midApril, her condition seemed to be on the upswing.

Thinking she had improved, she and her mother went on a bike ride with a few friends on Mother’s Day. It backfired: Swanson immediately had trouble breathing and suddenly had an episode in which she couldn’t recognize anything: plants, her block, the people she was with. That week, she struggled to spell simple words.

Even now, more than 100 days in, it hasn’t been a full recovery: Blood tests showed she had too little oxygen in her brain and her head still feels foggy. There is the emotional toll, too, of relationships falling apart, and the pain of people questioning her experience. Some people still seem scared of seeing her, even 6 feet apart with masks — and it’s a burden for which no end date is clear.