SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – With summer vacation in full swing and masks voluntary, people can't wait to move forward and learn to live with COVID-19. But some are stuck standing still.
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According to the National Center for Health Statistics, one in five Americans is suffering from long COVID-19.
For one Bay Area medical expert, the issue hits close to home.
Dr. Bob Wachter, a frequently consulted physician on COVID-19 and Chair of Medicine at UCSF has been documenting the long COVID-19 journey of his wife, author Katie Hafner, on Twitter since she got the virus in May.
Hafner has been suffering from brain and severe exhaustion for weeks after recovering from her mild COVID-19 case, and for her, and many others in this situation, the circumstances are incredibly frustrating.
"If you look at me and talk to me I seem like my normal self," Hafner told KCBS Radio's Holly Quan. "I feel fine right now, because it's the morning and I got a little bit of sleep, but in an hour or two I will be begging to just go to bed."
For Hafner, its her mental energy that gets depleted faster than anything else, and it can affect her work.
"Writing is tough and takes a lot of energy," she said.
None of this surprises her husband, Dr. Wachter, who, like many medical experts, is still working to better understand the complexities of COVID-19.
"It's not just the fatigue that you get from having been sedentary for a little bit," he said. "There's something about this virus, and/or your immune response, that is continuing to knock you for a loop."
While Hafner thinks that her symptoms are improving, albeit very, very slowly, Wachter isn't so sure.
"People minimize them, and they say it's nothing," he said, about the long COVID-19 symptoms. "Obviously not nothing and it's actually a classic set of symptoms."
Symptoms that worry Hafner as she prepares for a book tour this summer.
"I keep thinking if we're all this foggy in the head, are we endangering ourselves in some way," said Hafner. "It's very worrisome."
"Partly because you think you're okay and then you realize you've hit some kind of wall," she said. "But what if you’re flying a 737?"
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