A teenager in the Valley is still battling the symptoms of COVID-19 more than a year after contracting the virus.
Lydia Pastore, a 16-year-old junior at Red Mountain High School, became incredibly sick in February 2020. Last year, she experienced severe fatigue, body aches and a host of other symptoms ranging from burning eyes and face to hand tremors.
“This was the worst illness I have ever suffered in my life,” said Lydia. “It’s just been constant muscle pain and fatigue that I just can’t seem to recover from. Walking to the end of my garage would leave me exhausted to the point of having to recover for two days.
Throughout the year, Lydia suffered from chronic fatigue, sleeping an average of 15 hours a day. After several visits to the doctor, she started a diary as a therapy for hand tremors, which became a method of tracking her own symptoms.
“I did a monthly symptom tracker, just because there were so many symptoms to monitor,” said Lydia. “I wish that at the beginning of my infection I had a resource like this, because all the specialists I visited asked me, ‘What has changed? What’s new? What symptoms are you experiencing? ‘ And it was always frustrating to try to remember all of that. “
Lydia decided to turn her illnesses into a chance to connect with other teenagers who are struggling with the long-term effects of COVID-19. She created siteronicconnections.org, where teenagers can share their personal journey with COVID-19 and request a symptom tracking diary that Lydia sends free to anyone in America.
“I hope it is a place for teenagers to connect with other people who are going through the same thing as them. To find comfort in the similarity,” said Lydia, who has already received four letters from teenagers about their struggles. “I am very happy with these four stories that I have had so far and I gave these diaries, but I feel that there are many more teenagers out there.”
What is “Long COVID?”
Lydia said she saw eight different health experts find out why she still has symptoms of COVID-19 months after her illness. His tests for valley fever were negative. Although she has never been tested for COVID-19, her doctors believe that Lydia has “long COVID” when a person has symptoms of COVID-19 long after contracting the virus.
“This post-viral syndrome occurs when you finish the initial infection, but for some unknown reason, we continue to experience some of the symptoms that you had before for a period of time that doesn’t really make sense scientifically,” said Dr. Gary Kirkilas, spokesman for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
For doctors, Lydia is considered a “long journey”. Dr. Kirkilas said that once the virus is eliminated over long distances, there is a residual effect of COVID-19 that can be caused by small amounts of the virus that are undetectable by COVID-19 tests, but still require a body’s immune system response. Another reason may be that the initial virus caused damage to internal organs that have not yet been healed.
On Tuesday, the National Institute of Health (NIH) announced a new initiative to study “Long COVID” to “identify the causes and, ultimately, the means of preventing and treating individuals who have been ill with COVID-19, but they don’t fully recover over a period of a few weeks. “
According to the NIH, symptoms include fatigue, shortness of breath, “brain fog”, sleep disorders, fevers, gastrointestinal symptoms, anxiety and depression.
“What separates them is this brain problem, this brain problem in that fog,” said Dr. Frank LoVecchio, ER physician at Valleywise Hospital. “At the hospital, we call this encephalitis (or inflammation of the brain). They can’t concentrate as well. They tend to be more forgetful.”
In December, the US Congress provided NIH $ 1.15 billion in funds to study the long-term effects of COVID-19.