CT college student depends on oxygen tank due to long COVID

BRIDGEPORT — It was September 2020 and Kelly Martinez had just started classes at Norwalk Community College, beginning her work to become a nurse.

Then, one night, she awoke with terrible pain, fever and difficulty breathing. Two days later, the symptoms persisted so she went to the emergency room. She was treated for COVID-19 and put on oxygen. She stayed in the hospital for about a week and left with an oxygen tank.

Now, 17 months after she was first diagnosed with COVID, the 21-year-old still depends on the oxygen tank. Though there’s progress, she said there isn’t a prognosis on when she’ll be back to 100 percent.

“It’s hard to hear they don’t really know,” said Martinez, of Bridgeport. “I just have to wait and see. Maybe I might get better, maybe I might not.”

Martinez isn’t the only one experiencing “long COVID,” what doctors use to describe patients who have lingering effects of COVID, or have changes in their bodies since contracting the virus. How it’s defined and the severity differs from case to case.

Dr. Jo-Anne Passalacqua is an infectious disease specialist at Hartford HealthCare’s St. Vincent’s Medical Center, who also has a private practice in Fairfield.

Passalacqua has worked with hundreds of COVID patients and estimates 5 to 10 percent have longlasting symptoms, whether it’s people who had normal blood sugar levels before and now have diabetes, or an extreme case like Martinez where a young, healthy person is now oxygen dependent.

A lot of younger patients don’t have those medical base lines before they get COVID because young, healthy people aren’t as likely to see a doctor regularly, she said. She has seen young people affected more by long COVID and encouraged them to take precautions, like wearing masks and washing their hands.

“I think so much of the myth around COVID is that this only happens to old, sick people and here is this young, vibrant college student,” Passalacqua said.

She’s been working with Martinez since the beginning.

“As her need for oxygen persisted, I began to worry, ‘Are we missing something?’” Passalacqua said.

Martinez said it was terrible when she was first diagnosed in the hospital.

“It was really hard because you can’t have any visitors,” she said, adding the nurses would come in to check vitals but that was it. “You spend a lot of time on your own.”

She said she would get headaches if she used her phone and so spent most of the time sleeping because noises and every breath hurt. The fever and headaches got better after about a month, but she still struggled with her breathing and her oxygen dosage rose.

Martinez withdrew from school so she could learn how to live with the oxygen tank and because she didn’t have the energy to go. Just walking across her room would tire her out and her muscles were weak.

Her memory was also affected. She couldn’t recall what she was learning in class and had Post-its around her room so she could keep track of tasks.

“I really couldn’t remember anything and my brain was so foggy,” she said.

Her days were also filled with doctors’ appointments and visits to special pulmonary and COVID clinics at Yale New Haven. She said she’s had about nine different doctors as she navigates the long-term effects. She’s had a range of tests, including some looking at her lungs, eyes and heart.

Passalacqua said she had recommended to her patients to get vaccinated after their symptoms went away while the vaccine was rolling out and people were becoming eligible to get it. She was reading the literature on COVID and saw the vaccine might help improve Martinez’s oxygen levels, and recommended she get the shot. She said she noticed the levels get better after the vaccine.

Martinez’s symptoms continue to improve, though she’s still on several liters of oxygen. She re-enrolled in school full-time last spring, which she credits a lot to her friends who help her carry her backpack and get there, and she’s working part-time at Stop & Shop.

She’s also able to start exercising again and taking proactive steps to help her symptoms, Passalacqua said.

“My experience is that patients that end up with long COVID, it’s a very long process,” she said, adding she’s seeing progress in all of them, but it’s not uncommon that it takes awhile.

Passalacqua got her start treating HIV and AIDs patients at the start of that epidemic and sees a lot of similarities between then and now. She said a lot of treatments and knowledge about HIV and AIDS around today was developed in special clinics as more patients came to them. She thinks these COVID specialty clinics will have a similar role, which is why she’s encouraging Martinez to go to them.

She said one of the challenges with helping COVID patients is that there aren’t set treatments beyond addressing the symptoms, though she said they’ve already made a lot of progress in COVID treatments since the pandemic started.