Deborah Wood spent her 69th birthdaytwo weeks agoalone in her quiet Fairfield home, wincing through the stabbing pains in her stomach, lungs and heart. For the last year and a half, she’s spent most of her nights like this.
This is how COVID-19 has left her.
She says that her March 2020 diagnosis felt like a death sentence. Especially since she was the first COVID patient at Mercy Health-Fairfield Hospital and third in Butler County, according to Mercy Health spokesperson Nanette Bentley.
Wood survived a two-week hospitalization and a round of Hydroxychloroquine, an immunosuppressive drug touted by then-President Trump and since shown to have no antiviral effects on COVID-19.But her life, body and mind were forever changed.
The condition is called Long COVID. She is now among many now referred to a "long-haulers."
They are in a position that many doctors didn’t expect to even exist.
In 40 years of medicine, TriHealth pulmonologist David Wiltse said he’s never seen a condition cut across the body and leaves destruction in its wake quite like Long COVID.
And in such large numbers.
A report published in the journal A FAIR Health White Paper said that about a quarter of COVID survivors develop Long COVID. This leaves over 3 million Americans with the condition. And about a third of these patients report never even feeling sick when they had the active virus, according to a study published in the journal MedRXIV.
