Entering into year three of this COVID virus certainly has us seeing things a little differently. While the overall numbers are decreasing, our lab continues to report positive cases daily.
COVID Fatigue & The 3 P’s
Conversations around numbers are now turning into conversations around multiple lingering effects. One of the biggest being long-term fatigue, presenting symptoms like chronic fatigue or myalgic encephalomyelitis, which are historically post viral. COVID fatigue is REAL and should be addressed.
Education surrounding COVID fatigue is a must and many providers are now teaching patients to follow the 3P’s: Pace yourself, Plan out your activities, and Prioritize them. Before COVID, many patients would be looked at with a suspicious eye when making complaints about fatigue after having COVID.
Varying Symptoms
Reality is, this virus leaves a lot of different symptoms, many still unexplained. Neurologic symptoms such as brain fog, attentional disorders, and memory loss DO exist. Brain fog is how many patients describe the medical term anomia (word retrieval challenges). Small fiber neuropathic symptoms have begun to pop up in many post COVID patients as well. Some patients have experienced symptoms similar to postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS). Of course, many still have a loss of taste and smell.
Listening to Patients & Using the Right Tools
More than ever, it is important for patients to trust and have confidence in their providers. Listening, believing, trusting and caring for patients’ symptoms from COVID is great medicine in itself and half the battle they are facing. One thing COVID has taught us is we do not know a lot about the long-term effects of this disease and while it is hard, it’s okay to simply say “I don’t know”.
Staying vigilant in looking for other possible causes for symptoms and not getting caught up in discounting everything as “COVID” is what providers we work with do very well. Other diseases and causes of symptoms have not gone underground just because COVID exists. Bacterial infections, flu, pneumonia, and other viruses still exist and continue to be as prevalent as they were pre-COVID.
Along with all of the COVID positive tests we see daily, we also see many different urinary, respiratory, and wound pathogens with our PCR testing. We also see a lot of antibiotic-resistant bugs! So many articles are discussing prescriptions and uses of wrong antibiotics or missed diagnosis, simply because the best tools available are not being used. Continuing to do the same thing being done for so many years. Simply observing the results from the molecular tests we run reinforces the belief in the efficacy of this technology in assisting in the treatment of patients. It helps to get it right the first time.