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When it comes to long COVID, the treatment playbook is constantly evolving

Derek Christie, a 61-year-old musician from Richmond Hill, Ont., nearly died of COVID-19 twice over the last eight months. But survival was only the beginning of a long road back.

Christie is one of the more than 170,000 long-COVID patients across Canada. Like the others, he faced a mystifying array of lingering after-effects, from tinnitus to intense pain throughout parts of his body. Long-COVID patients — sometimes called long haulers — are defined as those who have at least one unexplained symptom lasting longer than 12 weeks.

“The cough, the fatigue, the aches and pains, hair loss, occasional insomnia, brain fog, like I’m having now,” he said.

Christie is getting help. He’s an outpatient at a clinic  offered by the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, where he’s seen — both in person and virtually — by a team of experts. It is one of approximately 20 such clinics across the country that specifically help patients grappling with a much longer than expected recovery from COVID-19.

At the moment, there’s no known cure for long COVID, so doctors are creating their own treatment playbook for those affected by lingering symptoms of the disease.

WATCH | Doctors work to solve long COVID, as patients just fight to recover: 

Doctors search to solve long COVID as patients fight to recover

 

It’s been a learning experience for  Dr. Alexandra Rendely, a physiatrist who has been working with Christie, and her team of physio and occupational therapists. They are trying to figure things out as they go, treating patients who can be fine one day and terrible the next. 

Even if Rendely and the others can’t find anything structurally wrong with their patients, it doesn’t mean the health concerns are less valid. “I think as physicians we should believe our patients with the symptoms that they’re experiencing,” she said. Read more on this story here.

Keep your eye on it

(Mark Zaleski/The Associated Press)

Mitchell Friess competes in the men’s free skate program during the U.S. Figure Skating Championships on Sunday in Nashville.

In brief

Nearly two years into the pandemic, thousands of Canadian front-line workers who are unable to do their job from home continue to put themselves at greater risk of contracting COVID-19. And with the the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant, those pressures, for many, …….

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/morning-brief-january-10-2022-1.6307061