A Year Into the Pandemic, Long COVID Is Still Burdening Patients —and Their Caregivers

When Ghenya Grondin starts rattling off the symptoms she still experiences a year after getting sick with what she believes was COVID-19, she has to pause to consult a list she keeps on her phone for occasions like this one. Exhaustion. Fevers. Headaches. Body aches. Chest pain and shortness of breath. Nausea and gastrointestinal problems. Dry eyes. Brain fog and memory loss—hence her need for a digital list, which goes on and on. While Grondin’s physical symptoms are bad enough to keep her mostly homebound and unable to do her work as a postpartum doula, the constant mental fogginess has hit her hard emotionally. “I was always the friend and the sister and the cousin who remembered birthdays…and that has changed,” says Grondin, 42. “Balls are constantly being dropped in our household.” That’s not for lack of trying, Grondin says. It’s just that all the responsibilities of what was once a two-parent, two-job household have fallen on the shoulders of her 42-year-old husband, Jonathan. Each day, Jonathan does his best to juggle his full-time job as a creative director; parenting three boys ages four to 14; maintaining the family’s home in Waltham, Mass.; and caring for Ghenya, who is so sick Jonathan doesn’t like leaving her alone for longer than an hour at a time. His wife now needs help with almost everything, from preparing meals to booking and attending doctor’s appointments to even walking from the be...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news