Are there any other sporty folks recovering from covid?

[Natastrophe]

I'm Natalie, a keen photographer, hiker, cyclist and runner. Very much enjoyed being fit, until my world was turned upside down by covid/pneumonia. I'm recovering but have months and months to go as I can hardly walk around my house without getting out of breath.

I bought my fitbit to help with sleep and monitor my heart (covid left me with a Tachycardia). I'd love to connect with others recovering and share our fight back to fitness. I was in hospital critically ill for a month, so came out very de-conditioned, I have lost so much strength in my legs.

Before all this, I could run 5k in about 30 minutes, not bad for my 50 years of age. I also enjoyed hiking in the lakes with my camera and capturing the beauty of the scenery. 

I'm going to be documenting my recovery on my Youtube Channel (youtube.com/natswright)

[kaynelvb]

I am recovering from Covid, just as you are, Natalie.  I have never been much of an athlete, but have always enjoyed walking, gardening and other physical stuff.  

I did not have the serious after effects that you do, but I do find that I have no endurance, or stamina.  My strength is back, but my breathing is still giving me problems.  Especially with stairs, and we have them in the house, so I can't avoid them.  Also, talking too much will take my breath away.  Driving for any length of time over about an hour is rather hard for me to do, as well.  I live in the boonies, and I have to drive to get anywhere, no cabs, buses, trains or other modes of public transport, so the driving can be an issue.  It just seems to exhaust me.  But I'm working on that, and when I do go out, I usually take a side trip, just for the heck of it, and hopefully get me back into the swing of it all.

I was in two different hospitals for a total of 5 weeks, and then 1 week of rehab.  I was intubated, and the first hospital didn't think I would survive with the help they could provide, so they sent me to a bigger, and better, hospital about 200 miles away.  They had to fly me there by helicopter, because they didn't think I would survive an ambulance ride.  I credit the rehab for getting the strength back in my legs.  I had a total of ninety minute sessions per day, just about every day, and they really worked me hard during each of those minutes.  Before I got sick, I was able to walk a mile in 20 minutes and not be out of breath at all.  Now, I'm lucky if I can walk 1/2 mile in 20 minutes, but I keep working at it.  That is the best that we can do, really, try to do a little bit better every day.  

I just keep working at it, and praying that it will get better.  It's not easy, but I will succeed.  I'm just too stubborn to do otherwise!

Kayne

[Natastrophe]

So, not updated for a while, but spoke with my physo today for my 6 week check in. Seems i'm doing ok. What i'm wondering is if the new readiness score can really predict fatigue? I've been suffering anxiety lately as I was so worried i'd push myself to far, and crash. Ironically, anxiety can be identical to fatigue.

I looked at my readiness score and its been over 95 all week pretty much. Today I did a little more activity, and it dropped to 65, indicating I have some energy left, but rest tomorrow is prudent.

Lets see if it works.

Wish fitbit would make a dedicated app for covid and post viral fatigue sufferers.

[SunsetRunner]

I’m still having issues (non-covid. Chronic pulmonary clots) and sadly they are getting a bit worse, I’ve had to take a step backwards. But look what my granddaughter made for me! Thought I’d share it. 

[Natastrophe]

Aw, sorry to hear you had to take a step back, setbacks do happen, but keep your spirits up! What a talented grandaughter you have!!

[Natastrophe]

I'm well into my recovery, but far from full fitness. In fact my fitbit has calculated a readiness score of 10 for the last 3 days. I've moved back home and am looking after myself now, rather than being looked after by my parents.

This means i've jumped from around 18 cardio minutes to over 50 as I now have to do all tasks myself! Other than a massive day of fatigue on saturday and sunday (4th and 5th) I felt ok on monday.

I've suffered a lot on anxiety, and it's often this that causes me to have a high heart rate.

So, in essence, is the readiness score wrong as the fitbit does not know i'm recovering from covid and have a tachycardia condition. Usually, when i'm not anxious, my sitting heart rate is around 80 bpm. When I stand, it jumps to 100 bpm, walking is anywhere from 110-130 bpm, hence all the cardio and fitbit thinking i'm getting worn out?

Thoughts folks?

I get the feeling I may have to listen to my body and not the fitbit on this occasion!

[shipo]

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@Natastrophe wrote:

I get the feeling I may have to listen to my body and not the fitbit on this occasion!

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This is ALWAYS great advice, regardless of where other input is coming from.  By that I mean, take other information into account (health tracker, blood tests, general health studies...) and do not dismiss it out of hand, but weigh the importance of this other information based upon what your body is telling you and adjust accordingly.

[shipo]

Circling back to your initial post in this thread...

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@Natastrophe wrote:

I'm Natalie, a keen photographer, hiker, cyclist and runner. Very much enjoyed being fit, until my world was turned upside down by covid/pneumonia. I'm recovering but have months and months to go as I can hardly walk around my house without getting out of breath.

I bought my fitbit to help with sleep and monitor my heart (covid left me with a Tachycardia). I'd love to connect with others recovering and share our fight back to fitness. I was in hospital critically ill for a month, so came out very de-conditioned, I have lost so much strength in my legs.

Before all this, I could run 5k in about 30 minutes, not bad for my 50 years of age. I also enjoyed hiking in the lakes with my camera and capturing the beauty of the scenery. 

I'm going to be documenting my recovery on my Youtube Channel (youtube.com/natswright)

---

Up until I turned 60 I had been extremely fit (I logged a 1:38 half marathon when I was 59), then a week or so before I turned 60 I was working too many hours and getting far too little sleep and had a sinus infection drain into my lungs which in turn morphed into pneumonia.  Several years, and a number of separate injuries (broken bones, torn soft tissue...), went by and in January of 2020 I got what I thought was a bad sinus infection while on an extended business trip; unfortunately this turned out to be my first case of COVID.  When I got back home I went for a hike, which had been a daily activity before the trip, and I was stunned at how painful my lungs were while climbing up a hill; things were so bad by the time I got to the top I cut my normal 5-mile hike to less than a mile.

My initial COVID symptoms ended up lasting from the last week of January 2020 through the end of April, however, that wasn't the end of it.  My breathing was steadily improving, but the rest of my body was experiencing systemic swelling of my joints, especially my knees; the swelling/pain got so bad I could barely sleep at night and by morning my knees looked like small melons.  Between May and November of 2020 I tried many things to relieve the pain and swelling and the only thing which seemed to work from time to time was what I call "slogging" (very-very slow jogging).  The thing was, I could only slog maybe a half mile at a stretch, and my ego refused to let me back off from my normal daily hike; in desperation my ego finally relented last December.  I took two weeks off of any physical activity and then started slogging a half mile daily; that ended in failure.  I switched to slogging every other day and whaddya know, that worked!  By January of this year I was able to slog a total of 75 miles and by the end of the month was able to go up to five miles at a stretch; all with no pain.

Drawing some data from my experience and applying it to yours, it took time, a lot of time, but my heart rate did eventually return to my pre-COVID patterns and my breathing is still gradually improving, this after nearly 1,200 miles of jogging (yes, I've graduated from slogging to jogging).  My take is the lungs are an amazing organ, but yeesh, they sure let you know when things are amiss, and while they do have the ability to heal, they need to be pushed, often pushed hard, to force the healing, and in the process will make you pay the price for such activity.

[Perryrobert]

Hello Natalie. It is amazing to me that your story sounds so much like my own. I am an ex athlete. Power lifted competivly, even played football for several years. Anyway, I wish I could get back in shape. I’m only 63 and I feel like I could do a lot of the things I used to do in my 20s, 30 and 40s. I find it hard to get motivated for some reason. Maybe it would help to have encouragement from someone who understand. Would you like to take this journey together?

[Natastrophe]

Hiya Perry, 

So are you recovering from covid pneumonia too? I just went out on a walk today, only 260m, and I had to take a break in the middle too. It took me a few hours to recover, so I literally have a mountain to climb.

The only time I felt that exhausted was after a 10km hike up a mountain. Even then, I managed to drive my car 100 miles from the lake district to my house, so just shows you what covid and a month in hospital can do!

[Natastrophe]

Wow, what a story! I did manage to walk a few 100 meters today, but I really struggle to stand for more than 10 minutes at a time. When you are in hospital for a month, you have virtually no muscle left! You are correct about time though, although as I get stronger it does accelerate. 3 weeks ago, I was unable to use stairs, now I can manage them ok, and get a bit breathless. I try to use them twice a day and want to build on that. I hope that in another month i'm comfortable around the house, and can manage to walk 500m comfortably. Fingers crossed.

[mattpobrien4]

Hi, how are you 😁

[SunsetRunner]

@shipo and @Perryrobert - Welcome to the thread! I look forward to hearing how you are progressing. Hang in there! You are among friends. 

Hi @mattpobrien4 - What’s your story?  Glad you found us here. 

As for me, my progress pretty much came to a stop after being hospitalized with clots in my lung and leg this month. Believe me when I say you DO NOT want to be in ER with covid surging. (My hats off to the medical staff for coping with all this.) I cannot walk much but I have started back on my under-table elliptical - 15 minutes, twice a day most days. Yay! Progress is progress. I’ll take it! I’m supposed to start pulmonary rehab soon but will probably work on my own, at least until this latest surge is over. I never had covid but my issues are similar to long haul covid. The last thing I need is to add covid to my mix. 

Happy holidays, everyone! Keep on keeping on!

[shipo]

Hang in there Carol, I agree with you regarding not wanting to be in the hospital.  I was hospitalized this last July following an attack I received compliments of two 150+ pound dogs, and yup, I got my second case of COVID.  The good news is having been fully vaccinated, this case caused symptoms which lasted a total of 3 days versus 10 months from the case I had last year.

[t.parker]

I have Covid right now and I hope it won't leave any marks on my health. So far so good. Being vaccinated (my booster jab was scheduled on 7th Jan but Covid was faster) it doesn't seem to be any different from the way I go through my regular common cold (including sinuses infection). Maybe it just lasts little longer. As soon as I felt better I started doing mild cardio on the bike trainer (I'm still isolating) and don't see any issues so far. My exercise HR is normal (performance wise), BR normal, resting HR went a few beats up (39 pre-covid, 47 during Covid although I didn't have much rest during first days of illness). Yesterday, I cycled 50km mostly flat route (on GPS bike trainer 🙂 not breaking my isolation) and managed to read a book while doing it. I believe, looking at symptoms that I have caught Omicron variant for which there's evidence of being less severe (but more infectious). I'm signed up for a couple of half-marathons in first quarter of 2022 and it would be very disappointing to have to cancel it.

[shipo]

Yeesh, @t.parker, good luck recovering.  Given you've been vaccinated, I wouldn't draw too many conclusions on how you feel indicating which variant you have; last summer when I got my second case of COVID, after having the two Pfizer vaccines, my symptoms were pretty minor, feeling run down, sinus, and painful ribs (which I initially attributed to a fall I'd taken while on a trail run earlier in the week).  Regardless, stay active, "COVID hates an active body."

[mattpobrien4]

My Introduction 😀

Hi all, I am from canada 🙂 I have a recovery story but not related to covid. 🙃

When I was playing football and got slide tackled hard from the right and rolled my ankle and fell. It massively ballooned up but not fractured. And then I consulted a Physiotherapy Clinic in Mississauga for treatment. They told me they can help me to recover and given me a hope. They were friendly and so good that I recovered from the ankle injury quickly. I was very pleased with them because now i can play, run, jump or anything physically i can do it without anyones help 😉

[SunsetRunner]

Nice to see you here, @mattpobrien4 . Thanks for sharing your story. 

[t.parker]

@shipo in general, most of the diseases hate active bodies 🙂 There's lots of scientific evidence that exercising during illness may help with recovery due to increasing body temperature, helping to clear up airways. Athletes are much better at fighting infections as their bodies are used to being in constant recovery. Of course, we should still listen to our bodies to know how much is too much (for example, if you have fever you don't want to increase your body temperature through exercise anymore, this may backfire).

Today, I went for my first post-covid run. I tested negative yesterday and today (in the UK, you may stop self-isolating if the two consecutive LF tests will return negative within 24 hours). Still, I stayed away from any human beings 🙂 I was going to take it easy and just do a 5K run but the distance stretched to 10K (pace 5:13, cadence 182spm, power 248W/s, quite happy with that). The start was tough but then BR stabilized and the run was quite pleasant. BR was the metric I was particularly curious about and breathing is often affected by covid. I see no difference between today's and pre-covid runs on the same route when it comes to BR (on average BR=37, my usual). I noticed a slight increase in the HR (I pretty much run in my threshold) but this could be related to the fact that I haven't been running for the last two weeks and I'm still not out of the woods (there's a secondary bacterial infection, quite common). The surprising thing is that the PC metric shows pretty good performance with not much fatigue towards the end of the run but with a huge dip at the beginning (first 8 minutes which felt tough and PC reflects that). It's very rare I end run with PC on the positive side (+1, +2). It may, however, mean that I just had quite a good rest over the past few days. The run was what I call a "free run" during which I don't look at metrics but run a comfortable run. I know one run may not be enough to assess my post-covid shape so I will keep an eye on any changes.

[Natastrophe]

Hiya folks,

Just thought i'd share an update here as i've not posted in a while.

I've made big improvements in the last few weeks, and other than a hiccup over christmas am doing ok. To add to my problems, a lot of my hair fell out at the start of december, normal reaction my doctor tells me! However It seems to be starting to grow back.

December was a month of anxiety more than recovering from covid pneumonia! In fact anxiety can "create" symptoms.

I came back from my parents at the start of the month, and found the first week tough, but did manage to go for my first walk. That was very tough and I remember my heart rate hitting 155bpm

The following week was one of steady progress, my Tachycardia has diminished to the point that when walking, my heart rate is a pretty normal 110-120. I went for a few more walks, but they were tough, and only a 100m or so.

Christmas week was bad, my parents visited on xmas eve, but I did not sleep well and was very anxious over christmas and boxing day. I moped about feeling so ill all the time.

This spilled over into the 27th and 28th, where I was suffering cabin fever too. I needed to be out and out and out on my terms. It had been a tough day, the food deliver i'd taken later in the week absolutely knackered me. But at least I can now get the bags up the stairs myself!

The day after this, I decided enough was enough, anxiety or not, I was going for a walk, and nothing was going to stop me. I wobbled down the stairs with a weak feeling in my legs and lifted my 4 wheeled walker out the door.

Off I set, and some 300m later, I was back and anxiety free. My legs had suddenly lost the jelly like feeling! Since then I have gone for a short walk every day and am up to 550m, although I do have to rest half way.

On top of this, I can prep meals, do a little cleaning, dry my hair after a fashion.

I'm hitting 3000-3500 steps a day now, thats a third of what is recommended.

I still get occasional anxiety hits, but can better deal with them now. I feel less trapped as I can freely move around the house and go for a walk, once a day, if I choose.

I do get tired still, and do meditate 3 times a day still, but am managing better now.

Lets hope I keep improving, I need to get back to work, get back driving, and get out without worrying that my battery will run out!

Oddly, when I go to bed, I get very hot feet. Only started happening a few weeks ago.

[Natastrophe]

Well, thought i'd do a little update. I'm now back at work, on a phased return, and I started jogging this week. Just for 5 minutes and with a 1 minute walk in the middle. Also do a minutes warm up walking, plus a minute warm down.

I'm feeling it today, although now i'm almost 5 months into recovery, I just get a bit achy and tired, not massive fatigue crashes. I do not get breathless as such, just more normal out of breath when exerting. I was finding that normal activities were not really pushing me much. As my Physio said, I need to get out of breath to build muscles, so thats what i'm doing.

Sleep is much better now, although I still have nocturia, that gets me up several times a night, however i'm managing to get good deep and rem sleep most nights and wake up with enough energy to manage through the day.

Afternoons are hardest, as my energy seems to drop then, however I can now exercise in the afternoon, which was tricky a month ago as I could crash a month ago.

I'm not better, but certainly on the mend I feel.

I continue to eat healthy foods, with some treats. I also take a multivitamin, plus vitamin D3 too. I have Epsom salts baths 1-2 times a week.

I can also manage light housework on most days, and am able to carry my shopping up the stairs now.

I'm also driving again, and have been able to get out and about.

My next challenge is to go to a shop or cafe and re-integrate into society, probably in a month or so.

I long for my energy to come back!