In August, 2023 I got COVID, which turned into long COVID.
After more than a year, I consider myself fully recovered.
Before COVID
Before COVID I was very active, woodworking with hand tools, mowing my grass with an old fashioned reel mower, kayak fishing, walking 2.5 miles every day, not to mention working every day. During most of my long COVID journey I was only able to do a tiny fraction of what I used to.
Symptoms
I was diagnosed with the chronic fatigue syndrome phenotype of long COVID.
My main symptom was fatigue and post-exertional malaise. Sometimes I also had brain fog, “bobblehead,” and chills. Sometimes when I felt bad my blood pressure was low (systolic < 100).
COVID Timeline
For people who have not experienced long COVID or ME/CFS, it’s difficult to explain the fatigue. For almost a year my body had very little energy. Everything takes energy: talking to people, driving a car, reading, processing the emotions from being sick, on and on. My basic metric for what I could do was walking. When you read that I could walk a mile, keep in mind that basically means walking a mile, but not doing anything else that day.
The symptoms of my acute infection were very mild.
Months 0-3. Over and over again I thought I was recovered and returned to work, got exhausted, and crashed. The crashes would take days of bed rest to recover. Finally I took medical leave and rested 2.5 months. By the end of this time I had learned to pace myself and I worked my way back from bed-bound to walking 2.5 miles each morning.
Month 4. I thought I was ready to return to work half time. I had to go to bed super early and I could feel myself declining. I didn’t gain any stamina, which surprised me. At the end of the month I went back on medical leave and started physical therapy.
Month 5. I had a huge crash, which I attribute to physical therapy, but the exhaustion from trying to work didn’t help. I was bed bound again and my baseline had reset lower than before, so I had to work myself up much more slowly than the first time.
Month 6-7. I generally felt bad. My only real activity was to walk once a day. By the end I could walk a mile, but that walk would consume all of my energy for the day.
Month 8-9. At the beginning of month 8 I was able to walk 2.5 miles several days in a row, but I saw from my symptom tracking that my fatigue was increasing, so I backed off to one mile.
Month 10. I crashed at the beginning of the month and had to spend two weeks recovering with no walking. Late in the month I shaved the dog in four 15-minute sessions, which I was pretty sure would cause another crash, but I didn’t have symptoms. With PEM gone, I could cautiously explore my energy envelope more.
Month 11. I cautiously explored my energy envelope and have no crashes. I could walk 2.5 miles every morning and still feel good. I could fish from my kayak, which used to make me crash.
Month 12. I returned to work at 3/4 time. I got tired and needed extra naps, but I could feel my stamina building. I did’t need to limit my physical activities in order to work.
Month 16. I returned to work full-time.
Month 18. I can do all the activities I want to do and I consider myself recovered.
I believe that if I could have avoided the big crash in month 5 that I would have recovered sooner.
Read more about treatments I believe have helped.
Disclaimers
I have no medical training and this is just one person’s experience.
However, I hope that writing down my experiences can help someone else. Writing is also a way to rehab my brain so I could get back to work.
I have no sponsors, affiliate links, or other financial interests related to these articles.
Remember I am only sharing my experience. Long COVID looks very different for different people.