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PARIS, March 13 – Difficulty breathing, concentration and even walking: five months after being diagnosed with Covid-19, Violaine Cousineau continues to suffer from severe symptoms that prevent her from recurring. normal life.
“I feel like I’m 30 years old in a few months,” the 47-year-old Canadian says AFP. Sitting in her kitchen and wearing a mask, Cousineau moves with her hands as she speaks, as if clarifying her words as her voice is reduced to whiskey. .
“I don’t know myself, my family doesn’t know me either. I wasn’t the man I was, ”said a Montreal resident, noting that she walks with a rod so she doesn’t fall.
She is the mother of two daughters aged 12 and 15, is one of hundreds of patients expected by a new clinic in Montreal specializing in long-term health effects at Covid-19, or “Covid long. ” She had no previous health problems and even walked “super cardio” in the mountains near weekends.
After getting the illness in October, she spent the first week trying, including being in bed for three days.
“I never expected for a fraction of a second to go beyond that,” she says. Now, cooking has become difficult – and going downstairs? “I’m going to be lost for the day,” laments the literature teacher who can no longer turn the pages to read a novel or return to work. “Everyday life has been turned upside down,” she says. “It’s the situation of life.” 10 to 30 per cent harassed –
Secretly, a large number of patients who contract the novel coronavirus suffer destructive symptoms long after others have overcome it. The European branch of the World Health Organization says that the seemingly dire situation must be “extremely important” to health authorities around the world.
In Quebec, which has recorded more than 294,000 cases of coronavirus, “between 10 and 30 percent of patients may have complications,” said Emilia Liana Falcone, director of the new clinic Montreal Clinical Research Institute (IRCM), affiliated to the University of Montreal. Opened in February, the clinic’s doctors focus on Covid’s long-term complications and longevity to diagnose the causes and develop treatments. Falcone says patients still show symptoms one year after being infected.
The clinic, she says, has so far examined about 15 patients and expects hundreds more with complications that affect “19-year-olds as much as 69-year-olds. age. ‘Fatigue is definitely common,’ says the infectious disease specialist, and also shortness of breath, muscle pain or sleep disorders. Cousineau says she “doesn’t expect miracles. ”
Blood tests, cardiac ultrasound, chest x-ray: all tests have returned to normal.
“I almost feel like a mutant, a new species that has emerged and needs to be successfully coded,” she said with a smirk.
The only relief from her symptoms: spending very long hours in the fast Canadian winter air, outside the city. Anne Bhereur, 44, another patient at the clinic, finds it “very encouraging to be supported by people who are capable and interested in understanding what is happening.” “What makes breathing so difficult? ”Surprises the long-serving Covid family doctor, explaining in whiskey that her colleagues are“ just as baffled ”by her symptoms.
After Covid-19’s contract in December at the hospital where she worked in palliative care, Bhereur thought she would return ten days later “with protection against the virus, while she’s a little safer. ”
But she still feels very tired and has difficulty breathing and concentrating, forcing her to break up all daily activities. “It takes me 30 minutes to walk around the block when it doesn’t even take 10,” she said, adding that she was trying “hard to be optimistic.” She said: “Laughing or crying, I get too short to breathe, so we take things one day at a time.” – ETX Studios