Thread by @SalvMattera

With COVID spiking again, I wanted to write about my experience this year dealing with a very mild form of long COVID. I hope this can be a cautionary tale for people who are still convinced that healthy "low risk" people have nothing to worry about from a COVID infection.

As I've written before, I was a healthy 33 year old with no obvious pre-existing conditions. No one would consider me to be "high risk" as I detailed here:

https://x.com/SalvMattera/status/1711196109157417193?s=20

After I caught COVID for the third time at the beginning of January 2023, I just sort of never recovered. At first it was like I was sick for almost 3 months straight. I continued to work at a high level, but on the weekends, all I could do was lay on the couch.

This put a lot of stress on my wife, since we have a toddler, and I could barely help take care of her at all. I would just be on the couch, dozing off, half asleep, feeling like garbage all weekend for months.

I had all sorts of symptoms that would come and go on a daily basis. Lots of excruciating chest pain. Parts of my body would vibrate, or go numb. Vision issues. Dizziness. Random shortness of breath episodes while I was just sitting at my computer.

And many other things. Fortunately, as the year progressed, I did slowly heal, and many of these symptoms have stopped happening. But at the time, it was deeply unsettling, especially because no doctors were willing to help.

I have great insurance, so I can see basically any doctor or specialist that I want. For most of the year, I was averaging one doctor visit of some kind of every single week, trying to figure out what was going on and if I could get any sort of treatment.

Virtually none of it was worthwhile. Many tests were ordered but nothing much was found. At times, I was told that I might have HIV, MS, or adult onset hydrocephalus. Thankfully I have none of these things, but it was very stressful and nerve wracking

having a doctor tell me this and have to wait weeks to get my test results back. At one point, a doctor was convinced that I had hydrocephalus and frantically called me at night and urged me to get a brain MRI right away.

But as it turns out the waiting list for a brain MRI in California is like 2+ months. So I had to spend my lunch breaks at work calling different hospitals to see if they could get me in. Finally I got an appointment, but the day before it was supposed to occur, their machine

broke. And they called me and told me it would be another month. And then they accidentally messed up my booking and it got pushed back again. All the while I'm remembering this frantic phone call thinking my brain is filling with fluid

I went to the ER several times. At first it was from the chest pain. It felt like someone was sitting on my chest, or stabbing my heart with a knife. Then it was after half my face went numb - maybe I was having a stroke?

Thankfully it wasn't a heart attack or a stroke, but no one could give me an answer. "Yeah I had really bad chest pain for at least a month after COVID too" the one ER doctor told me. "You guys are like a lab experiment" the other one said.

I had to cancel both my vacations for the year because I was simply too sick to think I'd enjoy them. I did take one trip to Arizona for a friend's bachelor party. But just standing in the heat sent my heart rate up above 150 bpm. One of the days, we were supposed to

hang out at this pool party at a hotel. But I had to sneak away and go sit by myself in the lobby and recover in the AC for at least 10 minutes about once an hour. And I was this guy who literally less than a year earlier was drinking at Burning Man and dancing in 100+

degree heat in front of Mayan Warrior like it was nothing. And here I am now and I can't even be with my friends in a cabana for more than an hour without my heart feeling like its about to explode

For that matter I completely lost the ability to drink alcohol and for a long time, caffeine (I can drink it again now thankfully). Any amount would make all my symptoms 10x worse for hours or even days.

I spent a lot of time looking for a decent primary care doctor. The first few straight up refused to believe me. My current doctor is great, but as she told me last time I saw her - she doesn't really know what to do.

My mental health has always been excellent. I had never seen a therapist or any thing along those lines my entire life. But as I was going through this, I thought maybe I'd try and see if they could give me a little support. What a mistake.

The first one didn't believe me. The second recommended looking at the FLCCC protocol (if you don't know, it's an anti-vaxx org that pushes ivermectin). The third started mentioning COVID conspiracy theories.

So if this happens to you, don't expect much support or understanding from your therapist, let alone your doctor.

As time has passed, my health has gotten better. I still can't smell much. I can't drink alcohol. My joints hurt sometimes for no reason. I'm not sure how my body will react to the heat - I'll test that out next summer I guess. Maybe I'll eventually heal in another year or two

But even if I do, I'll remember 2023 as being one of the worst years of my entire life, and I can't imagine having another year like this again. Right now, I know there are many people who actively sick with COVID as I write this, and some of them will have a 2024 like my 2023

And my heart breaks for them, because I know no one has really explained this to them. And they think COVID is no big deal. And they're going to go to their doctor and their doctor isn't going to be able to help them and they're not going to know what to do

and maybe they'll end up much sicker than me, because as I said, my experience is actually on the mild end compared to so many others. And maybe they won't get any better, they might actually get worse, as many people do

I don't want to shut the world down. It's obviously impractical. But as society is currently functioning, we're dooming millions of people to this fate, and we're not even telling them. Barely even a warning. Hidden in the fine print at most.

No one wants to hear this stuff. I'd probably be better off personally keeping it to myself, waiting until I fully recovered and then pretending it never happened. But I just can't. Because my story isn't rare. People should know the risks they're taking