What It’s Really Like to Live With Long COVID, According to People Who Have It

What It’s Really Like to Live With Long COVID, According to People Who Have It
For 11% of the billions who have had COVID, things may never be normal again.

Meryl Davids Landau,  Published: Jan 2, 2024

https://www.prevention.com/health/health-conditions/a45786978/living-with-long-covid/

If you came down with COVID and—after a few sniffly, exhausted, achy days—you bounced back, you are one of the lucky ones. Up to 28 million Americans, the majority of them women, have had symptoms that have lingered for months or years—or developed new and bizarre ones. Some of what ails them may never go away.

Long COVID doesn’t look the same for everyone. “Long COVID is an umbrella term encompassing all the long-term effects that remain well after the typical run of the virus,” says Ziyad Al-Aly, M.D., a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis. People may have headaches, fatigue, digestive problems, chest pain, brain fog, weird periods, and more. While researchers are hard at work figuring out causes of and treatments for long COVID, we wanted to give you a window into what it’s like to live with it. Three women share their stories here.