Lesa Schultz has been sick for about 17 months. One of the “first wavers,” Schultz got COVID-19 on a trip home from Los Angeles in March 2020 before the first pandemic lockdowns began in Tennessee. Schultz, a self-employed consultant, joins many Tennesseans in suffering from “long COVID.”
According to the World Health Organization, patients who recover from COVID-19 but still experience certain symptoms may have a “post-COVID condition” or “long COVID.” Vanderbilt assistant professor of medicine Dr. Sapna Kripalani said long COVID is defined by symptoms that persist six to eight weeks after a patient recovers from their initial illness. Kripalani listed dozens of symptoms that can affect people with long COVID, and Schultz and other long COVID patients in Tennessee suffer from many of them.
Schultz, who lives in Nashville, said on any given day she may be nearly completely disabled because of her symptoms. The 39-year-old’s symptoms started with a sore throat and quickly escalated to intense chest pain, headaches and difficulty breathing. She slept sitting up several nights as it was the only comfortable position. But at the time doctors didn’t know how to help, and Schultz said she was told that as long as she could breathe she should avoid the hospital.
“It’s a terrifying feeling,” Schultz said. “No one knew how to help and I was the sickest I’d ever been.”
By June 2020, Schultz felt “mostly normal,” but in July 2020 she began getting new symptoms unlike her initial illness. Chest pains, dizziness, body aches, stomach aches, tachycardia, nerve pain, brain fog, fatigue and other severe symptoms sent her back to the doctor. Schultz said her symptoms often mimic those of an immunocompromised person, and if she pushes herself too hard or works too much she’ll be bed-bound for days afterward. She began to realize she might have long COVID and joined a Tennessee-based Facebook group called COVID-19 Long Haulers to connect with others experiencing the same problems.