COVID19 and Me: A Telling of my Personal Experience with the Coronavirus - Update 04/02/2021

I wrote a piece called “COVID19 and Me: A telling of my personal experience with the coronavirus” on the 16th of September, two months post-diagnosis. In the weeks that followed my recovery, I was extremely lucky. An increasing concern in the medical field has been a series of symptoms that can present after a person has contracted the coronavirus, which has since coined the term “Post-COVID Syndrome.” These symptoms can range from mild to debilitating, from brain fog to difficulty breathing. Decreased lung capacity has also been studied since the pandemics' rise. A group of scientists in southeastern China studied lung function in individuals who had contracted the coronavirus and came to the conclusion that, “of the 40 non-severe and 17 severe cases, 31 patients (54.4%) still had abnormal findings on chest computed tomography (CT). The rate of abnormalities was much higher in severe (16 or 17, or 94.1%) than in mild illness (15/ 31, 37.5%).” Although I now have no known lasting impacts from the coronavirus, I did experience difficulty breathing at times, largely when lying down. This lasted for approximately two months after my recovery. Again, I’d like to reiterate that I have been extremely fortunate to have recovered swiftly, and I’d like to end this update off with the current death count. 2 280 000 individuals have lost their lives due to this virus.

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 Huang, Y., Tan, C., Wu, J. et al. Impact of coronavirus disease 2019 on pulmonary function in early convalescence phase. Respir Res 21, 163 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12931-020-01429-6