My Post-Covid Long Haul Journey

I have been really quiet on the social media and blogging front for much of the year. I have been dealing with some serious fatigue and brain fog (inability to focus) for much of 2021. While it has been a frustrating journey, I have still been able to continue operating my commercial cleaning business even though there were many days that were like working in quicksand. I want to share some of my journey and things I’ve learned over the last 12 months. The numbers of people dealing with post covid long term effects seems to have settled on 15-20% of people infected with the virus. 

Anne and I fought covid in November of 2020. It was mild to moderate for both of us and we only missed a handful of work days. I was feeling pretty normal by Thanksgiving. I was back to normal activity by early December with just a bit of shortness of breath. I started to feel bad around the 2nd week of December. I woke up and felt like the 1st few days of the flu….achy, fatigue, and inability to focus. I figured I had just caught another bug and took it easy. These symptoms lasted well past the holidays and I started to see news about “Long Haul Covid”. I contacted my Dr and they said there wasn’t much they could do since it was still a new thing. I made an appointment and all of my blood and urine work were fine and lungs sounded fine even though I had shortness of breath. The only thing I could do was to make sure I was sleeping well, eating a healthy diet, and lots of water. 

I started to feel a bit better as summer rolled around. I had a scare in late June when I had a bout of shortness of breath coupled with aches and pains in my chest. Anne and I headed to the ER and went through a litany of tests. Thankfully I was not having a heart attack and was feeling well enough to go to the baseball game that weekend. The subsequent follow up tests (EKG, Lung Scan, etc) showed that I was a healthy 50 year old male….even thought I was still struggling with symptoms, although not as bad as earlier in the year.

Another round of blood work in August showed that my Vitamin D levels were extremely low and I started on heavy supplementation. This has improved my symptoms greatly. I am no longer exhausted after my cleaning work and rarely have aches and pains. I still have trouble with brain fog and some shortness of breath. These seem to cycle every 10-14 days. I can tell when I wake up what kind of day it will be. I wake up feeling like a bad hangover on days of my down cycles, even though I quit drinking in March. My inability to focus has kept me hesitant to dive headfirst into this blog and coaching business. My health is trending up, so I am making it a priority to start using social media and this website to share a positive message about personal finance and money. I will be facilitating and teaching some money classes in the new year, so things are looking up. 

I am sure that you or someone you love is suffering from the long haul symptoms. Please know and share that we are not alone in this fight. There are clinics starting around the country trying to get a handle on this. I am fortunate that I think I have it figured out and am on the right track. I have discovered through conversations with other people, health professionals, and research that each person seems to have different symptoms and diagnosis is difficult. 

One thing that I will share in a later blog post is how switching to a high deductible/low out of pocket HSA health insurance plan two years ago kept this from being a huge financial burden on our family. 

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