The Road Back Home: Coping with post-COVID’s long shadow

Global reports say 20-30% of patients who were infected with COVID-19 are reporting symptoms more than 30 days post-infection. Click To Tweet

Post-COVID symptoms can be caused by anything from viral damage to specific organs like the lungs, heart or kidneys, to an autoimmune response. (One study published in the BMJ found that roughly half of 29 hospitalized COVID-19 patients emerged from their ICU stay with autoantibodies, which are antibodies that attack a patient’s own tissues or organs.)

Dr. Roberta Capp, Vice President of Clinical Operations and Innovations and Chief Medical Officer at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (Blue Cross NC), said part of the trickiness with diagnosing long COVID is how differently it presents in each patient. “The post-COVID symptoms are so broad, it can be other conditions creating heart problems, breathing problems, neurological problems. That’s why we want to correlate those symptoms.”

For patients who are still struggling with their health after two weeks, the first thing to do, she said, is to “see your PCP to get an evaluation to determine the next step, whether that’s testing, or a referral to infectious disease specialist.”

“We also have nurse case managers who can coordinate care, help members find a PCP if they don’t have one, and provide a review of member benefits.”

For Dawn, it has been the combined support of an attentive and proactive PCP and a dedicated nurse case manager that has helped her start making her way back to the person she was before.

“The nurse assigned to me helped so much. She checked in on me and helped me get a referral to an infectious disease specialist. She even sent me a face masks and an OTC card so I could pick up some vitamins and other necessities. I was shocked,” she said. “Blue Cross NC stepped up to the plate to help me and it felt like they cared about me as a person.”

Her advice to others coping with post-COVID: “You are not alone, and you’re not crazy. The medical world is still struggling to figure out what is going on with us. Don’t give up, things will catch up. Just hold on.”

The post-COVID road may be long, but for patients like Dawn, there’s hope for a rainbow around the bend.