LOS ANGELES — For months 51-year-old Rio Hernandez has been fighting an invisible enemy.
“It was a lot of hours of empty time and not feeling well and going into a sort of deep depression,” Hernandez said.
In late February Hernandez started to feel ill, she had trouble getting out of bed, felt exhausted, and kept having sinus problems. She didn’t have the usual fever and cough associated with COVID-19, she said. But she still went to get tested as soon as coronavirus drive up testing centers opened at the beginning of April.
“It took me about eight days to get my results and they were positive and that was really hard," she said. "It was really hard psychologically and really hard because I had to ask all those questions; like well, why am I still sick a month later? and why am is still testing positive a month after I got sick?”
She quarantined herself, spent months indoors, hoping rest and isolation would improve her symptoms.
“Now we’re here in August and I’m still having issues,” Hernandez said. “Why am I not getting well? This is bizarre. Am I re-infecting myself? What’s happening?” she wonders.
Hernandez is a part of a growing crowd of COVID-19 long-haulers who are turning to Facebook groups for support. Patients who are still feeling symptoms months after testing positive for the virus and even after testing negative too. A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 87% of patients surveyed had at least one lingering symptom after recovering from COVID-19.
Hernandez said she has about a dozen. She said she has arthritis pain and bruising, even hair loss.
“Right now what I deal with mostly is still a lot of bizarre sinus pressure, sinus headaches . . . Shortness of breath, breaking issues . . . Tightness in my chest . . . The brain fog is terrible, I went from being perfectly normal to suddenly being like, 'What is the name for this thing I eat my food with? Oh, spoon!'”
But what’s even more bothersome, Hernandez said, is the mental health toll this is taking on her, so much so, she had to call a crisis hotline one day.
“I felt like I was going a bit crazy, and feeling desperate and terrified," she said. "Doctors say maybe you’re gonna live, maybe you’re gonna die, maybe it turns into pneumonia. I would say that’s harder than the illness itself.”
Until the illness subsides, she said she’s having to find her treatments.
“It’s been very therapeutic to sort of be able to sit outside and be somewhere quiet and peaceful. I feel like doing that and the gardening and everything I’ve started to do it’s helping me feel better,” she said.