One day, suddenly, Hannah Davis was unable to read her last text message. The word bubble on the shiny phone screen stared back at her as her eyes and mind tried, unsuccessfully, to adjust and react. It was his first clue that something was not right; then came the fever, the headaches, the muscle pain, the tremors.
That was in late March 2020. For Davis, it was a year of brain fog, unusual heartbeat, ghost smells and memory loss so strong that she initially feared she had some degenerative disease.
His “long-distance” COVID-19 manifested itself widely in neurological problems that, over time, worsened.
“I still have what I feel is a 48-hour memory,” Davis, 33, told ABC News.
As a young woman who studied machine learning and artificial intelligence, thinking critically is a big part of her life – which makes it even more difficult to deal with her persistent, often debilitating symptoms.
During the day, she often has “difficulty finding words” when trying to express an idea. But this is only the beginning.
“In the beginning, I would wake up with my arms completely numb and without feeling them,” she said. “I had ghost smells, tremors … In addition to the cough and shortness of breath, and everything that was on the CDC’s list of symptoms, there was just one other whole category.”
What was once understood as a respiratory virus has now emerged, for many, as a total attack on the system.
A new study is now exploring what Davis and many other long-distance travelers have felt for some time: COVID-19 may have long-term impacts on the body and brain.
The Northwestern University School of Medicine’s peer-reviewed research released on Tuesday interviewed 100 patients in 21 states and found that 85% of participants experienced four or more neurological symptoms, more than six weeks after they were infected, and even though the illness was not serious enough to require hospitalization.
Reported problems included brain fog, fatigue, dizziness, joint and muscle pain, headaches, numbness and tingling.
Half of the patients surveyed did not have confirmed COVID-19 tests – a limitation of the study perhaps caused by the scarce diagnostic tools during the early days of the pandemic, when people who wanted a test were not always able to get it.
In December, the Patient-Led Research Collaborative released a study – which Davis helped to write – of emerging long-distance symptoms.
Although it has not yet been peer-reviewed, it signals a clear pattern: in more than 3,700 long-distance self-descriptions in 56 countries, more than 85% reported having cerebral fog and cognitive dysfunction.
Some of the most common symptoms among them were lack of attention or concentration, difficulty thinking, difficulty with executive functioning and slow thoughts.
Even seven months after they were first infected, more than half of the respondents had memory and memory problems.
Headache, insomnia, vertigo, neuralgia, neuropsychiatric disorders, tremors, sensitivity to noise and light, phantom odors, tinnitus and other sensorimotor symptoms were also common among the interviewees.
A peer-reviewed study by Survivor Corps, in collaboration with Indiana University, the University of California Irvine and the Mayo Clinic, was released on Tuesday. He surveyed more than 5,000 self-reported long-haulers recruited from COVID-19 support groups online and showed that more than half of the respondents had prolonged concentration difficulties and more than a third experienced long-term memory problems and dizziness.
Laura Gross, 72, tested positive for the virus in April 2020. Her unshakable brain fog plagued her for months. She describes him as being caught by a “cyclone”.
“We have all these folders in our heads, as well as a computer – and we all intuitively know how to go straight and connect to each one right away,” said Gross. “COVID blows it up and makes it all go around.”
“It broke my heart,” continued Gross. “It broke me to the point that I am not who I am and cannot find myself. It sucks not to be who you are.”
In February, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced the launch of its $ 1.15 billion four-year initiative to study what causes long-term COVID symptoms. Its goal is to identify the long-term root cause – and, eventually, the means of treatment – COVID-19.
“The damage caused by COVID literally seems to know no bounds,” said Survivor Corps founder Diana Berrent. “All organs are vulnerable, including the brain, and we must start to understand the long-term COVID mechanisms so that we can offer a recovery path for millions of suffering people.”
Davis says dealing with her symptoms has been a scary feat.
“It’s been scary,” she said. “But I’d rather try to find answers than just wait.”
Sony Salzman and Eric M. Strauss of ABC News contributed to this report.