I have long covid.

I used to bike to the train so I could get to work and back again at the end of the day for a total time of being on the bike per day of over an hour. There's a brutal hill to climb up to get to my house from the train and I did it every day.

1 month after getting the disease last February, I wasn't able to bike to work anymore. I simply couldn't get my air. I was able to bike immediately after getting over the disease, but over the course of the next month or so things got worse. I could barely get up the stairs.

I went to my general practitioner last March and he give me a prescription for heartburn (which had also magically become a problem when it wasn't before) and a rescue inhaler, which helped. He told me to report back in 2 weeks if it was still a problem. It was. I reported a little later than 2 weeks; it was 6 weeks, but it doesn't matter.

I live in Utah County, Utah. He told me to go up to Salt Lake, to the University of Utah hospital, 40 minutes north. They had a covid clinic up there. He got me an appointment to get up there in June. Apparently they had a backlog.

When I saw the nurse practitioner in Salt Lake, she said I probably had asthma and to go to a pulmonary specialist. She gave me a referral. I was able to use that referral to get another appointment with the pulmonary specialist... in December.

So I waited 6 months and then had an appointment in December with the pulmonologist. During that time when I would go to bed my lungs sounded like pop rocks. Snap, crackle, pop. Wheeze, wheeze, wheeze. My throat was constricted so much that you could hear a whistling sound when I breathed out and in. It was hard during the day, too. I would climb a flight of stairs and my coworkers would ask why I was out of breath and sweating like I had just run a mile.

The time finally came to see the specialist. He appeared to be a venerable gentleman at the end of his career, with white hair and a polished demeanor. He gave me a new inhaler, which eventually helped, and an extension of the heartburn prescription. I had new chest x-rays done and he ran a bunch of tests on me. I walked the hall a few times timed. They took my blood pressure before and after. I had to breathe into a tube really hard several times in different ways (spirography). All the tests came back normal. No asthma. He said he's getting a lot of long covid patients where all the tests are coming back normal.

When I told him I had stopped biking because of covid he was incredibly surprised. "Do you mean to tell me that you've stopped all physical activity?" Said he. I said, "Why do you think I've come here? My pulse is over 90 (100? Can't remember) just sitting here. Look at me; I'm all sweaty." Replied he, "But surely you are sweaty because you had to come up the stairs to get here." (The pulmonologist's office was on the third floor). "No", I said. "I took the elevator." And for all that I owe the hospital a hefty bill because it was a specialist.

Well the pulmonologist recommended that I take pulmonary rehabilitation. Basically it's physical therapy. The first time I went they said I had to start walking 6 minutes four times a day. Then I had to start walking or biking 10 minutes three times a day. I'm up to 12 minutes three times a day now, sometimes back on my bike, and it feels pretty good. So far this is what has helped the most. I don't feel like I need the rescue inhaler anymore, I've stopped wheezing and pop rocking, and I notice less when I go up the stairs now.

But understand me when I say that people who think that long covid isn't real are in a most enviable position. I can assure you, it's real and it's not fun. I remember biking yesterday and feeling so alive. Not being able to do that for so long has been really rough. You don't know what you miss until it's taken away from you.

Edit: it's not depression, see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35176860