COVID PTSD

I'm a little frustrated about the fact that this blogging platform doesn't allow me to tag my posts - in other words, to put each post in one or more categories, which are searchable.  Instead, there's a search function (which works very well, surprisingly, as in-site search engines are notoriously useless) that I use to find posts on a particular subject - if I can remember a word or phrase I used in most or all of them.  This is harder than you might imagine, especially given that we're up over 150 posts by now.

After searching with three phrases that didn't work, I finally thought up one that did - it was "side effects."  This led me to two posts about the long-term effects of COVID-19 - the major medical complaints that survivors come back to the hospital with.  As with many aspects of this novel coronavirus, we don't know how long these medical consequences (or vaccinations, or immunity from infection, etc.) last.    

Apparently, we still don't know much, except that these effects are real and persistent.  And now the Annals of Translational and Clinical Neurology presents a study, summarized at MedicalXpress, that suggests that COVID patients who did not need hospitalization are equally at risk of cognitive dysfunction, which has been the area of primary concern in the "long-haul" research:

The researchers found that approximately 85% of those patients they studied were reported to have had at least four neurological symptoms—the most common were brain fog, headaches and numbness or tingling. Other common symptoms included loss of taste and/or smell, blurred vision, dizziness and ringing in the ears. They noted that many of the patients described such symptoms as coming and going, and most reported their symptoms lasting for several months—some for as long as nine.

The study also suggests that patients diagnosed with depression before contracting the virus were more likely to present with this maddening array of neurological issues.

It is a relatively small study, but large enough to mean something.  It's almost as if COVID leaves many of us with a neurological PTSD.  Which means those of us who survived, don't all survive, and that there will be widespread medical challenges long after we reach the new world.