Patients with long COVID say they feel abandoned by health services as symptoms continue – CBC

Calls for better financial aid, research and service from clinics that have a treatment limit of 18 months

Aug 29, 2022

Before the pandemic, Adriana Patino would spend hours in the pool training as a competitive swimmer. Now, the 37-year-old can barely walk to the front door of her apartment.

Patino has long COVID, a condition with more than a hundred symptoms that, for some, can be devastating.

In Patino’s case, she suffers from extreme fatigue, shortness of breath, heart pain, neurological issues and blurred vision, among other symptoms. It’s left her unable to work and unable to leave her apartment, except for her twice-weekly trip to the front sidewalk for five minutes.

“It’s been 20 months now of never-ending hell,” says Patino.

Patino was a patient at St. Paul’s post-COVID recovery clinic in Vancouver, but after 18 months of treatment, she was told she could no longer be treated.

It’s just one example of the way long-haulers — the term used to describe people suffering from long COVID — feel they’ve been abandoned by the government and health authorities to suffer in silence.

Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/long-covid-sense-abandonment-1.6564583

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