Doug Frizzell can’t remember what “normal” feels like anymore.
Sitting at the kitchen table of his East Brainerd home in February, his uncle on a nearby couch to help him recount his life since falling ill, Frizzell described what’s been 21 months of “pure hell,” experiencing a range of unexplained symptoms that mirror long COVID.
He’s endured excruciating headaches, debilitating brain fog, insomnia and gastrointestinal issues that make it difficult to ever leave home. Among the 20 different symptoms he’s documented, the worst, he said, were the internal tremors that “felt like 1,000 bees stinging” and made him fear for his life.
“It’s like internally just chaos going on in my body,” Frizzell said. “I would lay on my couch and cry for hours until I just, hopefully, fell asleep, if I could. But I was under such stress that I couldn’t sleep at this time, as crazy as that sounds.”
Tennessee’s first reported COVID-19 case was three years ago Sunday. As the pandemic spread rapidly across the globe, some previously healthy people who became infected — even those with initially mild illnesses — noticed they were struggling to recover or grappling with new, enduring health issues weeks after their initial infection.