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Violaine Cousineau, 47, photographed at her home in Montreal, is one of many people suffering from the long-term effects of Covid-19.
MONTREAL, Canada: Difficulty breathing, concentrating and even walking: Five months after being diagnosed with Covid-19, Violaine Cousineau continues to suffer severe symptoms that prevent her from returning to her normal life.
“I feel like I’ve aged 30 years in a few months,” the 47-year-old Canadian told AFP.
Sitting in her kitchen and wearing a mask, Cousineau gestures with her hands as she speaks, as if to accentuate her words, as her voice has been reduced to a whisper.
“I don’t recognize myself, my family doesn’t recognize me either. I’m not the person I was, ”says the Montreal resident, noting that she walks with a cane to avoid falling.
A mother of two 12- and 15-year-old girls, she is one of hundreds of expected patients from a new clinic in Montreal that specializes in the long-term health impacts of Covid-19, or “Long-term Covid.”
He had no pre-existing health problems and even enjoyed “super cardio” hikes in the nearby mountains on the weekends.
After contracting the disease in October, she had a difficult first week, which included being bedridden for three days.
“I could never have thought for a fraction of a second that it would go further,” he says.
Now cooking has become difficult, and going downstairs? “They are going to give me a blow for today,” 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,” he says. “It is the test of his life.”
– Significant number of affected –
A significant number of patients who contract the new coronavirus mysteriously suffer debilitating symptoms long after others recover. The European branch of the World Health Organization says the seemingly chronic condition must be “of utmost importance” to health authorities around the world.
In Quebec, which has registered more than 294,000 cases of the coronavirus, “it could be 10 to 30 percent of patients who have complications,” says Emilia Liana Falcone, director of the new clinic created by the Montreal Clinical Research Institute ( IRCM). , which is affiliated with the University of Montreal.
Opened in February, the clinic’s doctors aim to understand the long-term complications of Covid and their duration in order to then determine the causes and develop treatments.
Falcone says there are patients who still show symptoms a year after becoming infected.
The clinic, he says, has so far examined about 15 patients and expects several hundred more with complications that can affect “19-year-olds as much as 69.”
“Fatigue is definitely very common,” says the infectious disease specialist, as is shortness of breath, muscle aches or sleep disturbances.
Cousineau says she “doesn’t expect miracles.” Blood tests, cardiac ultrasound, chest X-ray – all tests were normal.
“I almost feel like a mutant, a new species that has appeared and needs to be successfully decoded,” he says with a smile.
The only relief from her symptoms: spending many hours in the cool Canadian winter air outside the city.
Anne Bhereur, 44, another patient at the clinic, finds it “very comforting to be supported by competent people interested in understanding what is happening.”
“What is it that makes breathing so difficult?” wonders the family doctor afflicted by the long Covid, and explains in a whisper that his colleagues are “just as puzzled” by his symptoms.
After contracting Covid-19 in December at the hospital where she worked in palliative care, Bhereur thought she would return ten days later “with immunity to the virus, while being a little safer.”
But she still feels very tired and has trouble breathing and concentrating, forcing her to break down each daily task.
“It takes me 30 minutes to go around the block when normally it wouldn’t even take 10,” he says, adding that he struggles “to remain optimistic.
She adds: “When I laugh or cry, I am short of breath, so we take things one day at a time.”
