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“My son is not the one from before”

The few studies that have been carried out to date indicate that between 10 and 20% of people affected by covid end up suffering from persistent covid. In other words, the symptoms associated with the disease persist over time once the acute phase has passed. Adults, especially women, are those who are most affected by this persistence of symptoms. But children, although less, are also susceptible to them.

In December, the Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital in Badalona (Can Ruti) opened the first persistent covid pediatric unit in Catalonia, a disease already recognized by the WHO. “We do not know if there is any other in the State, but we believe not,” says María Méndez, head of the Pediatric Service of Can Ruti.


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Currently, this unit serves 14 children between the ages of 10 and 17. The symptoms that they carry are very varied, “but the most common are a lot of fatigue, weakness, shortness of breath and severe headaches,” says Méndez, who stresses that there are minors with “a very important affectation.”

Some also have mental fog (difficulty concentrating, memory loss …) “which makes their schooling very difficult.” According to Méndez, 50% of the children they attend have had the symptoms associated with the disease for many months, having been infected in the first wave.

Íker has been dragging the symptoms of covid since October

Íker has been dragging the symptoms of covid since October

LV / Ana Jiménez

This is not the case of Íker (15 years old), a patient at the unit, who tested positive on October 16 and has had symptoms for three months. It all started two days before, “when he began to complain of a headache and discomfort,” explains Anabel, his mother. The symptoms continued the next day. “He was very tired, he couldn’t even get out of bed. There I saw that something was happening ”. Soon after, the confirmation would come through the PCR.

The peak of the infection lasted between 10 and 15 days. During that time, says his mother, he drowned, suffered a severe headache, malaise throughout his body, a lot of exhaustion (he did not move from bed at all), stomach pain, diarrhea, although he did not have a fever. But after the acute phase many symptoms persisted.


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With the appearance of a new strong headache attack, they presented to the pediatrician again. And that’s when they told Anabel that they couldn’t do anything more for their son, that they would have to wait for the symptoms to disappear. “I told them I couldn’t wait, that my son was fading, that I couldn’t risk him staying like this. I asked the pediatrician how many cases of children he had seen like my son’s, he said none ”.

From there he went to private. They did all kinds of tests (he went through the endocrinologist, neurologist, cardiologist …) and they all came out well. “All the doctors told me the same thing, ‘if covid is something new, its consequences are even more so.’ The doctors did not know how to treat the child ”.

Doctors did not know how to treat the child



AnabelIker’s mother

It would finally be through an association of persistent covid patients that would end up in contact with the recently opened Can Ruti pediatric unit. “It was the best Christmas present.”

On January 12, she had her first visit to the unit – “they gave her a questionnaire about her symptoms, they did a psychological evaluation …”, Anabel relates – and on Wednesday the 20th she had the second. There he started with rehabilitation.

There are some children with a lot of muscle involvement



Maria MendezHead of the Pediatric Service of Can Ruti

On the one hand there is physical rehabilitation and on the other the cognitive one. “Physics is necessary because, in some cases, the children have been very weakened, it is difficult for them to walk, they have to stop every 15 minutes. There are some with a lot of muscular affectation ”, wields Dr. Méndez. The cognitive, meanwhile, has to do with mental fog. For this second type of rehabilitation, Can Ruti has the collaboration of the Institut Guttmann.

There are also children who need psychological or psychiatric support. “Any adolescent who is ill for a long time can have repercussions: they stop doing extracurricular activities, sports, seeing their friends …”, points out Méndez.


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It was precisely “the impact on children in their school day” that motivated the Can Ruti professionals to create this unit. “This is an age when academic training, sports, socialization are very important… and right at these ages, not being able to do all this is very dramatic. There are children who cannot go to school or do it only a few hours a day because they cannot last the entire school day ”.

Before Christmas, Íker – who has three younger siblings who live with him and have never tested positive, neither have their parents – had difficulties going to school for several consecutive days. “The day after making a small effort, like walking to school, I had a relapse,” Anabel explains. Now he manages to go every day, although he has had to leave the football team for the moment. “I do not see myself with strength,” he told his mother.

There are children who cannot go to school because they cannot last all day at school

There are children who cannot go to school because they cannot last all day at school

LV / Ana Jiménez

According to Anabel, Iker is immersed “in a loop” from which he has not been able to get out for the moment and in which “five good days and the appearance of a new relapse” are interspersed. “When the seizures come, a very strong exhaustion appears, with a lot of headache, and can be curled up in bed 24 hours in a row.”

He has also suffered from mental fog since December. At that time he had to learn two pages for a school assignment and he couldn’t. “He told me that he couldn’t memorize anything. Sometimes he gets disoriented and doesn’t remember certain things, ”explains the mother. This mental fog produces some anxiety in the child. “Many times he asks me, ‘Why did it happen to me?’

I hope that Íker will be the same again



AnabelIker’s mother

Anabel hopes that her son “will be the same again.” “I miss the typical mother / son discussions we had. I feel very helpless and anxious: what do I do? What do I give him? He does not stop being on the alert, and it is that from the Can Ruti unit they do not rule out that Íker could be infected again.

The tests that you have carried out have not detected antibodies in your body. He goes to school because he is not a danger to others despite being persistent covid, but he is susceptible to re-infection. “It goes with a double mask and with the hydroalcoholic gel on top, but we are very scared,” says Anabel.


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Despite the tough situation, the appearance on the road of the Can Ruti unit has been a real liberation. “Even finding her has been very hard. We have not felt the empathy and support they give us anywhere ”. He says that the first thing Dr. Méndez told him was that the unit’s objective was that no child with this problem miss the best years of his life. “And that came to me, I felt understood,” he concludes.

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