‘We’re not prepared’: What it takes to recover from long COVID
Global News
Recovering from COVID-19 means knowing how to pace yourself, rehabilitation experts say. Progress can take months.
Cindy McLean was living a normal life, working in a small-town Saskatchewan pharmacy, taking care of her family, and even going to the pool and occasional Zumba class to keep active.
Then, in January, she caught COVID-19 and her life hasn’t been the same since.
“Everything came to a halt,” she said. “I had people cooking meals. I had people looking after my husband and looking after my son.”
McLean said she couldn’t drive, she couldn’t shower, and she couldn’t even climb the stairs to get out of the basement where she was self-isolating.
McLean, a pharmacist from Watrous, Sask., said she didn’t have the typical symptoms of COVID-19, such as shortness of breath or a cough — at least not at first. Mostly, she said, she was tired.
“I probably slept close to 18 hours per day in the first six weeks,” she said.
She also had “brain fog” and cognitive issues that made it hard for her to read or watch TV for long periods of time.
She slept so much, she said, that she sometimes became dehydrated and was briefly hospitalized twice because of it.