The conversation on COVID-19 has stopped testing positive, recovering or testing negative and preventing the virus, but have you thought of the fate that awaits one in the scenario they test positive and recover?
Unlike other diseases where recovering from illness means the body is back to its previous status before the disease struck, in COVID-19, that is mostly not the case.
According to experts, the COVID-19 virus rushes to attack body organs immediately it infects a body and even if the body manages to fight it and the patient survives, the risk for organ failures is high.
COVID-19 has also been attributed to higher chances of one suffering stroke so even if you have NO pre-existing conditions that threaten your immunity and you are not aged, you become more predisposed to suffering strokes
Celebrities who have suffered from COVID-19 and have come out publicly about it have done their best to share their experiences and these must be taken into consideration.
Richard Quest is one of those who have come out to share how life has been from him since he was declared COVID-19 recovered, below is an extract from him via CNN.
“The cough has come back, without warning and seemingly for no reason; so has the fatigue. True, neither is as debilitating as when I had the actual virus, but they are back.
Like many others, I am now coming to realize that I am living and suffering from the long tail of COVID-19.
I got infected back in mid-April. The onset of symptoms came quickly. I suddenly noticed I was feeling very tired and I had a new cough.
I got tested and the morning after I received a phone call from the medical center, I had tested positive for coronavirus.
The virus is like a tornado. When it lands, it swirls through the body, causing chaos, confusion, coughs, wreaking damage to each organ it touches.
Some won’t survive its visit. For those that do, when it has gone one survey the damage to the human landscape and realizes it’s much greater than first thought.
My symptoms were on the milder side: I never had breathing difficulties or loss of sense of smell. I was wiped-out tired and I always had “the cough,” which has now returned.
The COVID-19 cough is not like your usual cough-it-up deep cough (what doctors politely call a “productive cough.”) It is very distinctive. It is a dry, raspy, wheezy, cough. In my case, lots of short, expelling gasps of air, followed by a long, deep, chest-wrenching expiration cough, that has standers-by wondering if I am going to keel over.
I have tested negative for the virus and positive for the antibodies and my doctor says it won’t return. But there are days when I feel that it has.
I am also discovering new areas of damage: I have now become incredibly clumsy. I was never the most lissome person, no one ever called me graceful, but my clumsiness is off the chart.
If I reach for a glass or take something out of a cupboard, I will knock it, or drop it on the floor. I have tripped over the curb and gone flying. I fall over furniture. It is as if that part of my brain, which subconsciously adjusts hand and movement to obstacles it sees, isn’t working.
At times there’s a sense of mild confusion. The micro-delay in thought, the hesitation with a word. Nobody would notice but me.
My digestive system is peculiar, to say the least since my recovery from COVID-19.
It doesn’t matter whether I call them symptoms, traits, or wreckage — my body doesn’t feel quite right.
The doctors try to reassure me, saying, this will wear off, but they can’t tell me when. Last week was bad. The cough has been with me for days, I have been tired and needed to take naps. I tripped over the camera tripod then fell over a chair! I am concerned but not panicked, yet. This week already feels much better.
For those who have not had COVID-19, or witnessed the mess it leaves behind, again, I urge you, do whatever you can to avoid this tornado.
It will roar through the body — kill some on the way — injure all in its path — and then when you think “well, thank God that’s gone,” look around, the damage is strewn everywhere and will be with you long after the crisis has passed.”
“COVID-19 is a tornado with a very long tail,” Richard Quest.
Read Also Nairobi Hospital Overwhelmed By Large Covid-19 Patients