New Member - First Post

Hello all, I'm new here and new to Mayo in general. It's nice to have finally found a place where others will understand my plight.

I came down with COVID in October of last year. I believe my symptoms started on the 10th. By the end of the day on the 11th, I felt like hell (and I was traveling for work, to boot.) My sense of taste and smell where nuked the following Monday. The cough was so bad that I'd loose vision for about a minute, and I'd have strange pulsing in my head, and buzzing in my ear (mostly the left side, but a bad coughing fit would allow it to creep over to the right.) I had zero energy, slept all day, and I was in a fair amount of pain. The dizziness was insane, and I couldn't drive most of the time. I eventually got my hands on a pulse-ox meter. My O2 was frequently down around 92, or so, and my resting heartrate was up in the 80's and sometimes 90's. My baseline when I'm healthy is 98/99 O@ and high 60's to low 70's for heartrate.

I made several trips to the walk-in clinic, a couple trips to my doctor, and one to the ER in the course of 6 weeks. I had never tested positive, so they didn't treat me like I had COVID. When Thanksgiving hit, my wife came down with COVID. I was starting to feel slightly better, and I decided not to mask up because I already had it. Well, I got it again. Exact same symptoms. The only positive parts of this was that the doctors took me seriously this time, and I started to feel slightly better after 4 weeks instead of 6. I haven't been keeping up with the pulse-ox.

For the most part, I haven't recovered. My Long COVID symptoms are chronic body and joint pain, chronic dizziness, cognitive impairment, chronic fatigue and I still can't smell very well. I'm struggling to get the most basic things done in life. This precipitated a divorce, so I'm living on my own, and keeping up around the house is impossible. I struggle playing with my 4 year old son (I can only play Mario Kart for about 15-20 minutes because of the joint pain), and I'm putting in for a leave of absence for the rest of the semester, since teaching has been extremely difficult most of the time. The flareups are brutal. There are times where my entire body throbs, including the palms of my hands and the bottoms of my feet. Most nights I try to aim for 10 hours of sleep, which hasn't been enough. Reading becomes difficult or impossible and the dizziness makes it so I can't drive.

The only people who really understand me are two friends who are still dealing with Long COVID themselves. My family are sympathetic (except for one obvious member, obviously.) Most of my friends and acquaintances are trying to be sympathetic. However, they spend a lot of time trying to diagnose me. Some have suggested exercise, and scoff when I tell them that's not possible. Others try prescribing me supplements based off of what they saw on the internet. None have really helped. Some have exacerbated things.

At any rate, I have a scheduled phone call with Mayo this afternoon. Here's hoping!