Looking at fitness therapist and enthusiast George Ma today, one might not know just how ill he was at one time.
Ma, 48, of Honolulu, is among the more than 200,000 Hawaii people who have contracted COVID-19, which landed him in the hospital for nearly two weeks in the summer of 2020. He was also one of the unfortunate patients to have suffered from post-acute COVID-19 syndrome, or “long COVID.”
“Being a long-hauler to me, personally, was worse than COVID itself in the hospital,” said Ma, who had no underlying health conditions prior to infection. “I had every symptom you could think of, and it was like a roller coaster.”
After catching the coronavirus following a gym class, he went from being in the best shape of his life to a hospital patient struggling to breathe with the help of an oxygen tube at Straub Medical Center.
The most difficult journey, however, was yet ahead: dealing with the symptoms of long COVID.
Ma suffered from chronic fatigue, shortness of breath and “brain fog,” which made him stumble over words.
The founder of Fitness Therapy Hawaii, which specializes in working with Parkinson’s disease patients, could not return to his full schedule of work due to the fatigue. He spent most of the time in bed — a far cry from days when he would wake up at 3 a.m. to work out at either a jujitsu studio or gym.
There were psychological impacts as well.
A month after the infection, he went in for an MRI to scan his brain, and being placed in the enclosed machine triggered an anxiety attack that brought back the days when he struggled to breathe at the hospital. Eventually, calming techniques and listening to music got him through the process.
During his struggle with long COVID, Ma gained weight and got depressed. Doctors seemed to be able to only treat his symptoms, not offer a cure. Because he was depressed, he was prescribed anxiety medication.
“The lowest point was not knowing when I’m going to feel normal again,” Ma said, “and thinking about not being able to work, having my partner support me.”
Still, he did not give up, and focused on recovery through breathing exercises, along with gradual physical activity. He consulted with his primary care physician, along with numerous specialists, including a pulmonary doctor, cardiologist, movement neurologist and chiropractor.
The turning point came after nearly a year was when he got his first Moderna vaccination shot in the spring of 2021. He felt an improvement after that first dose and has since been vaccinated with a second dose and a booster.
Today, Ma said, he is nearly 100% recovered from long COVID but is not yet in the peak condition he would like to be as an athlete.
Some initial studies, including one by Yale Medicine, have found long-haulers reporting improvements after receiving the COVID-19 vaccines, but this is not necessarily the case for everyone.
Dr. Dominic Chow, a physician with The Queen’s Medical Center Post COVID Recovery and Care Clinic, estimates about 15% to 20% of patients have recovered from long COVID.
The clinic sees patients in person and offers a multipronged approach, including diagnostic services, along with cardiovascular, pulmonary and neuropsychiatric evaluations. But, unfortunately, there is no universal cure for long COVID at this time, and there is no way to know who will or will not recover.
“Just because of the new syndrome that it is, it’s just way too early to have a universal cure, but lots of people are working at it,” Chow said. “Hopefully, with the new anti-virals coming out, maybe that might offer some protection or some hope. Again, we don’t know.”
The National Institutes of Health in 2021 launched a new initiative, with $1 billion from Congress, to fund research on the prevention and treatment of long COVID.
The Queen’s Medical Center and the University of Hawaii’s John A. Burns School of Medicine are working on a study of Hawaii residents suffering from long COVID to try to solve the mystery of the condition, which Chow said could be pivotal because the state’s population is unique.
For former TV news journalist Angela Keen, accepting the reality that she was suffering from brain fog, a symptom of long COVID, took a while.
Keen, founder of Hawaii Quarantine Kapu Breakers, a community group monitoring visitors’ compliance with COVID-19 restrictions, thinks she contracted the virus while officiating a wedding in March 2020, at the very start of the pandemic.
Following the initial infection, Keen, 53, said she felt foggy and would forget simple, everyday tasks like changing the pee pads for her dog, Scooter, and had to rely on notes to get through the day. She also suffered from headaches, lockjaw and mood swings.
“I got sad about it and got depressed,” she said. “I couldn’t remember people’s names.”
Keen was not her usual, energetic self at all and would feel exhausted after giving interviews. She suffered from major depressive disorder but kept her struggles private, eventually seeking help from a therapist.
The realization of how bad it was came to a head when she accepted an executive position for a health care company but had difficulty getting through the long days. She could no longer work after five weeks on the job.
Doctors prescribed her several types of antidepressants and medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder — six in all — she said, but none were effective.
“I got frustrated by the sixth medication,” she said. “I was crying nonstop. I’d wake up crying and say, ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m really sad and I can’t stop it.’”
She tapped into support groups online and, seeking answers, eventually did her own research on alternative treatments. Eventually, she discovered repetitive transcranial magnetic therapy — magnetic fields that stimulate nerve cells in the brain — a federally approved treatment offered by Brain Health Hawaii in Kahala.
Keen described the procedure as a mild tapping on the top of the head to wake up neurons. After three months of treatments, Keen believes she is on a path toward recovery and getting her memory back.
Previous to the treatments, she felt as if she had suffered from a concussion, as if her mind had aged several decades.
Now she has noticed her peripheral vision returning and is hearing more layers of sounds, including percussion from the radio and birds singing in the morning. Also, her depression is gone.
THE ROAD TO RECOVERY
Keen said she wanted to share her experience with others because it might help other long-COVID sufferers. In her online support groups, she has met many other long-COVID sufferers with similar symptoms.
“I can’t imagine people who are struggling, who cannot get back to work, who cannot get time off,” she said, adding that family members might not take them seriously. “They may just get tossed aside with, ‘Oh, she’s just got chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia.’ I think we’re going to have a generation of very sick people down the road as this progresses.”
Ma’s advice to others is to take baby steps and to not give up, which is what he tells clients with Parkinson’s. For him, personally, getting off of prescribed antidepressants made sense because they were not helping.
The path toward recovery for him included gradual daily exercise because that was part of his previous life, along with the boost from the vaccine. He had to accept that on some days he would not be able to do anything about the fatigue and would have to ride it out.
He found breath work, meditation and yin yoga to be helpful and adopted a vegan diet, temporarily.
Today he keeps in touch with a group of long-haulers and tries to offer hope and encouragement but knows the journey will be different for everyone. He also encourages others to get vaccinated and boosted against COVID-19 to stay safe — so they do not go through what he did — and he donates convalescent plasma.
“Everyone’s treatment is different, but there is an end of the rainbow,” he said.
ONLINE RESOURCES FOR LONG COVID
>> Long COVID Alliance: longcovidalliance.org
>> Body Politic: wearebodypolitic.com/covid19
>> Survivor Corps: survivorcorps.com/pccc
>> Long COVID Support: longcovid.org
>> ME Action: meaction.net/covid-19
>> Facebook COVID-19 Chat Group (must ask to join): fb.com/groups/278255903160505
>> COVID-19 Longhauler Advocacy Project (must ask to join): fb.com/groups/c19lap
