LIVING WITH LONG COVID

More than two years into the pandemic, some patients' symptoms aren't going away. While experts hunt for treatments, some people have taken matters into their own hands.

- Lisa Bendall

SHARI INGALLS counted herself lucky to make it through most of 2020 without catching Covid-19. She worked at a Calgary hospital as a labour and delivery nurse, looking after pregnant women. A married, 43-year-old mom to three school-aged kids, she was healthy and fit, visiting the gym several times a week and routinely cycling the 11 kilometres to and from work. Then, in the early hours of December 14, during a night shift, she was suddenly gripped by aches and chills. "I wiped down everything I'd touched with disinfectant, went home and rolled into bed," she says. A PCR test later that day confirmed that she had Covid-19.

Ingalls says her symptoms felt like the worst flu she'd ever had, but she expected they'd resolve in a week or so. Instead, after two weeks, her heart was still racing, she easily became short of breath, and pain radiated through her chest to her left shoulder. She couldn't keep her balance while standing in the shower. By early January, the chest pain was no better, and with a family history of cardiac trouble, Ingalls knew she couldn't leave it unaddressed. She went to the ER, but her heart tests were normal. The physician told her it was probably anxiety.

Despite feeling awful, Ingalls returned to her job in mid-January. "I thought I just had to work through it," she says. Yet even after reducing her shifts, she was exhausted. Her head ached daily. Her heart rate shot up to 140 beats a minute just from bending over to put on stockings. In the evenings, her husband and children prepared food for her, but she sometimes struggled to eat because certain meals smelled to her like rotten garlic or burned plastic. After, she'd take pain relievers and sleep for 15 hours.