“One day, I’m my age, and the next day, I feel like I’m 90 years old. “ Stéphane Gilles thus summarizes his daily life since he felt the first symptoms of Covid-19, around March 18. More than seventy days during which this 57-year-old sports manager from Lyon, with no medical history, learned to live with ups and downs. The serological test – designed to detect the presence of antibodies specific to SARS-CoV-2 – carried out three weeks ago returned to him positive. “I’m still tired, I’m still having trouble breathing. Yesterday, I climbed two stairs, I thought I was going to fall apart, he explains in a calm voice. A shopping bag that I put on a table, it takes me an hour to get over it. “
At the end of five weeks, he nevertheless believed himself cured of the disease, which declared as “A kind of little pharyngitis”. Like him, how many are they experiencing symptoms several weeks or even months after being infected? Difficult to assess because there are no statistics to date. Persistent respiratory discomfort, tightness in the chest, tachycardia, dizziness, neuralgia of the sciatica type, joint pain, cramps, tingling in the legs and hands, migraines, memory loss, rashes… the spectrum of the manifestations described is very broad.
Patricia (some patients prefer to testify on condition of anonymity), she had the first symptoms of Covid-19 on March 16: severe body aches, headaches, great fatigue, a little over 38 ° C temperature, heaviness on the chest and a rather weak cough. Nearly eleven weeks later, this 55-year-old woman, used to endurance sports, still suffers from this chest inflammation, burning sensations like icy air inside the lungs, and a dry cough that the heat worsens, making it difficult to breathe, especially at night.
A follow-up carried out in a hospital environment showed normal medical examinations (CT, blood test, respiratory functional exploration). She should take a treatment usually used for asthma to soothe breathing discomfort. “I went back to work on May 4 full time, despite the reluctance of the occupational doctor, thinking that with teleworking it would pass, but we had to face the facts after two and a half weeks, and switch to half-time due to exhaustion from mid-day and problems with concentration. “
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