Inside a nondescript suburban building in Denver’s southern suburbs, a woman named Alex Trebino stands on a blue balance board. In front of her is physical therapist Dan Stoot, who holds tennis balls in his hands.
“When you grab it with your right hand, I need you to tell me a musician,” he says, “when you grab it with your left hand, I need you to tell me a president. “
This is a puzzle game. He bounces the balls.
“Taylor Swift!” Trebino with a chuckle. ” And George Washington. “
The first time Trebino tried this exercise, it was complicated because for many months, Trebino suffered from a severe case of prolonged COVID. It is explained through the CDC as symptoms that last 3 months or more after first contracting the virus, and that were not provided prior to a COVID-19 infection.
“The first time we did that, there were no hands with categories or balls,” he said. “It was one bullet at a time, and you just have to return it. “
Trebino first got stuck with COVID-19 early in the pandemic. She suffered from fatigue, migraines and an unforgiving brain fog, severe enough to resign from her position as a control consultant. Then, last year, a momentary episode of COVID led to the 30-year-old woman. Denver resident retreats even further.
“I had tremors all over my body. He trembled a lot. I couldn’t walk, my husband had to help me walk. I couldn’t get up alone,” she recalls. I didn’t know how to cook anymore. I could no longer do family chores. He was bedridden.
“And they never gave me better. It’s like I knock myself down to a new baseline and that’s how I have to live my life,” Trebino said.
Doctors struggled to understand how to treat Trebino, who said he has progressed through this type of physical therapy. And it’s part of a University of Denver study, one of countless global efforts to detect and treat the long COVID.
Even if this picture intensifies, no one can say how many Coloradans suffer from it.
“I think they’re very large numbers,” Dr. Brown said. Sarah Jolley, CU Anshutz researcher and medical director of the UCHealth Post-COVID clinic, one of the sites of a national COVID recovery study.
The RECOVER study aims to understand how other people become infected with COVID and why other people don’t fully and spread COVID in the long term. Jolley said.
The exam will be adhered to participants for four years. They will be monitored frequently to see how things evolve during this 4-year period. They will participate in surveys and then additional tests based on their existing symptoms, which will be tailored to those symptoms.
Questions abound about the condition. Among them: How long will symptoms last?Once they disappear, can they come back?What remedies work?Who is more sensitive?What determines whether a case is mild, moderate, or severe?
“I don’t think we fully understand the science yet that explains why other people have an excess compared to others,” Jolley said.
The emerging studies aim to get society to cope with what some have called the next public fitness disaster.
“Thinking about the effect this will have on the workforce, the effect it will have on patients, families, caregivers, across the country is incredibly important,” Jolley said.
National estimates for the long range of COVID vary widely. A U. S. poll U. S. Published in June, it found that one in five people who contract the virus spreads a long COVID; more than 40% of adults in the U. S. U. S. officials reported having had COVID-19 in the past.
New studies published last month have raised new concerns about threats of reinfection. A study published in the journal Nature suggested that the threat of death, hospitalization and other serious physical disorders of COVID-19 increases considerably with reinfection, to a first infection with the virus, regardless of vaccination status.
On its dashboard, the state has reported a total of 1. 7 million cases of COVID-19 to date. This doesn’t come with maximum immediate at-home testing. So, potentially, “you’re part of a million or more Coloradans who might have widespread symptoms after COVID,” said Jolley, an assistant professor of pulmonary sciences and critical care medicine at CU School of Medicine.
But no one turns out to know for sure. Not fitness systems, not the state, which doesn’t collect knowledge about prolonged COVID.
State epidemiologist Dr. Rachel Herlihy said it’s much more complicated to track than individual cases, known through a positive verification result. In addition, he said there is no universally accepted definition of long-distance COVID.
“With prolonged COVID, it’s much more complex to diagnose,” he said.
Once diagnosed, how can patients be treated?Colorado researchers are focusing on one of the puzzles: the brain.
At DU, Bradley Davidson runs the Human Dynamics Lab, where they measure human movement and explore how other people move and why.
When the pandemic hit, Davidson and his colleagues had a “ah-ha” moment. It felt like a constellation of long, familiar COVID symptoms—things similar to sleep, fatigue, memory, and emotions—resembled those of a high-profile guy. wound
“We had this, ‘Wow, this looks a lot like a concussion,'” he said, like a traumatic brain injury that affects brain function.
Davidson and his team wondered if they could read about how motor control, motor skills and movement are affected by COVID-19. And they could find promising tactics to help patients.
“So if having COVID and now having prolonged COVID is like having a chronic brain injury,” Davidson said, then hypothesized, “we could treat prolonged COVID the same way we treat post-concussion syndrome. “
That refers to reading eye movements and tracking, as well as head movements, which he says may historically imply a brain problem, which his team found can be treated with rehabilitation therapy.
Back at the physiotherapy clinic, Dan Stoot worked with Alex Trebino on another mind game, this time a pair of handheld lasers and one on a lighthouse to guide light through a gut-shaped maze on the wall.
Trebino has been running those kinds of mind games, which involve things like balance, movement, memory and tracking items with his eyes, for months.
And she sees the progress.
“It’s definitely less difficult to do, I’ll say it,” Trebino said.
Stoot, director of the clinic and owner of High Definition Physical Therapy, said that so far, his studies show that certain brain games seem to help. So, you can tell patients, “There are some things you can paint on that deserve to have smart care. “functional results for you. “
This gave hope to Trebino, who has not yet returned to work and has filed a federal disability claim due to a long COVID. He said he denied it and appealed.
But she, the work she’s doing in physical therapy, is encouraging.
“I would say at my lowest level, at 5% on a smart day. Now I would say I’m between 25 and 30%. So there have been dramatic improvements. There is still a long way to go.
And there’s still a lot to be done for many other Coloradans, like Ana Rodriguez of Thornton and Clarence Troutman of Denver. I met them on a cool, cloudy day in a park northwest of Denver.
They didn’t know others before COVID-19 hit.
“Well, we came together, I feel like we came together just because of our experiences,” Rodriguez said.
“We’re in touch,” Troutman said. Certainly, we are in contact. “
Both beat each other and were in poor enough health to be hospitalized. They became friends through an organization after their release. It helped them cope. Rodriguez said more than two years later that her post-covid symptoms included fatigue, mental confusion, depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.
But the worst symptom is in him and in his feet.
“They feel like they’re on fire,” said Rodriguez, a mother of 3 adult children, describing neuropathy, weakness, numbness or pain from nerve damage.
She says her skin would possibly feel like it was popping off.
“If you look at them, my hands are swollen, but they’re so swollen they hurt,” he said.
So far, he has not discovered any acceptable remedy for this pain.
For Troutman, the physical treatment helped him cope with shortness of breath and regain stamina. But he still struggles with persistent mental confusion and concentration.
“I have a lot of trouble reading now, especially anything that’s an article longer than a paragraph,” Troutman said. He added that he did puns, such as word studies and crossword puzzles, “just to review and reconstruct. “, “intellectual abilities.
Troutman was a broadband technician at CenturyLink for 37 years. He caught the virus early in the pandemic, was hospitalized and put on a ventilator for a while, and ended up staying for two months.
More than two years later, the struggle, according to him and Rodriguez, continues. They hope that long-term advances in studies and remedies will bring some relief.
“Living with pain every day is a struggle,” Rodriguez said. “It’s getting better, but it’s still there. So I have to be informed of how to do it. It’s a new normal. “
For many long-haul carriers, they are learning to live with it and hope that emerging studies can help others understand how to fall with a prolonged case of COVID, or how to treat it if they do.
“That’s right. Once you’re out of the hospital, it’s not over,” Troutman said. “You are still facing a lot of things for a long period of time. “
And with the ongoing pandemic, the number of Coloradans suffering from prolonged covid continues to grow.
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