My Long Covid Labs

Summer 2023 Hospital Visit

I went to Switzerland to visit some friends in May of 2023. At some point during the trip, everyone in the co-living space got sick with some type of viral infection. I don't think anyone thought it was covid19, but none of us tested, so I really don't know.

What I do now is that about a week after I got back to Spain from Switzerland, I started experience shock-like sensations in the facial nerves of my face. I had a dental x-ray the day before, and at first was worried it was too strong or something. The shocks got worse, and started hitting my optical nerve as well, and even caused some partial numbbess of my forehead.

I went to the hospital and told them about it, at which point they did this CBC.

The high red blood cells is expected as I had been hiking at elevation in Switzerland, but the high neutrophils and low lymphocytes weren't. There is a metric they use to measure this disregulation and it's called the neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio. Less than 3 is pretty much ideal, and anything over 5 is cocerning. Mine was 9.45 here.

I have no idea what my CD4 count would have been here, but using some future data I got ChatGPT to estimate it at around 275-300.

December 23, 2023 - Post Omicron

Roughly around December 12, 2023, I got an omicron infection (confirmed via nasal self-test). At first it only presented with a fever, dripping nose, and itchy eyes. But eventually I started getting sinus pressure, and felt pretty miserable. It mostly resolved itself my about December 20, after which point all my problems started progresively getting worse.

On the morning of December 24th, I went for my typical morning walk to get a coffee. My resting HR is typically always about 55-60, so when I'm on the couch that's where it usually is. After resting on the couch after my walk, I could tell something was off. I noticed then that my resting HR was more like 90. And over time, it kept increasing.

After about 90 minutes it had hit 135 bpm or so, and made me realize I should get to a hospital. My blood pressure, normally pretty normal was 164/100. My neutrophils were at 76.3%, my lymphocytes were at 13.6% (NLR of 5.6 - elevated). My fibrinogen was normal, but slowly going up, now clocking in at 384mg/dL.

December 24, 2023 - Elevated HR

The next day, my HR just wouldn't calm down, and it was starting to worry me more. I went back to the hospital for another consult.

Similar to the labs the day before, my neutrophils were elevated and my lymphocytes were tanked again at 10.8% (NLR of 7.8 - really elevated). My amalyse was low on this test as well (not shown), indicating insufficient pancreatic enzymes.

The hospital assured me I wasn't dying, and that I should go see a cardiologist - i.e. stop wasting their time.

January 1, 2024 - Feeling unwell, elevated HR

On January 1st I woke up feeling unwell, again with an elevated HR. I tried going to a different hospital this time, one that was newer. On this test my Urea was low at 14mg/dl, my inorganic phosphate was low at 2.1mg/dL. Lymphocytes were once again low at 12.1%.

From my perspective, I was starting to feel like I was having some multi-system organ issues and things were getting worse.

January 16, 2024 - Mild Confusion

I went to take out the garbage this day, and remember feeling confused like I didn't really understand what I was doing. I hopped in a taxi and headed back to the hospital. My BP on admission was 160/100 here - it had been extremely unstable for a few weeks now. My temperature was 35.8C, so low.

The key anamoly on this lab was low stodium at 129mEq/L. At this level it can start causing cognitive issues. I had been feeling like I had been having trouble regulating my thirst for a few days too, like my body's thirst queues were off.

My fibrinogen as well had climbed further to 423mg/dl.

January 25, 2024 - Holter + Heart Issues

I had been feeling like my heart was really struggling for a few weeks, and noticed weird arythmias. My Garmin instict watch had frequently started losing the lock on my HR, and sometimes it would my HR would glitch like it wouldn't get a proper lock.

I schedule a 24 hour Holter monitor with a cardioloist.

A ChatGPT summary of it was:

• Your 24-hour Holter monitoring showed mostly normal baseline rhythm but with several notable abnormalities. There were occasional premature ventricular beats (PVCs) and short runs of both supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) and ventricular tachycardia, the fastest SVT reaching 212 bpm and the VT lasting up to 2.8 seconds. A brief episode of atrial fibrillation was recorded, lasting 1.4 minutes. Periods of bradycardia occurred frequently, with the slowest heart rate at 46 bpm, and the most concerning finding was a very long sinus pause of 11.52 seconds, which is highly abnormal and may indicate significant conduction system disease. While the ectopic beats and short tachycardia runs were brief and self-terminating, the prolonged pause is unusual and could require urgent cardiology evaluation, as it can cause fainting or other symptoms and sometimes warrants pacemaker consideration.

Strangely the cardiologist didn't care about the 11 second pause and didn't want any follow up.

February 17, 2024 - Acute Psychotic Event

On the morning on Feb 17, 2024, I woke up extremely paranoid on my friend's couch after having the most vivid dreams of my life. I dreamt I had done some unspeakable crime, and was meant to pay for it. My family had abandoned me, and that people were out to get me.

I tried to have breakfast, but my mind was racing, and I couldn't stop it. What had I done? Why was I guilty? I tried helping my friend fix his bike, but my hands started shaking and I was overwhelmed with this cosmic level knowledge that I had done something horric that was worth of punishment, and only in doing so would that save lives.

I dropped the screwdriver in my hand, ran out the door, and would spend the next 12 hours encountering the police several times, two visits to the hosptail, and was ultimately found missing my electronics, and some of my clothes, in front of Valencian bingo hall. The police took me back to the hospital, where I was admitted.

Upon admissing, my resting heart rate was 134, my O2 was 94%. My toxicology was completely clean, as I don't do drugs and hadn't even had a beer in weeks. Unfortunately, despite no mental health history at all, the triage nurse routed me to psychitary, where I was involuntarily committed for 14 days.

I spent the next few days hearing a voice in my head instructing me to leave the hospital, and thinking my entire family was dead along with all my friends. Since I had no phone, and my friends didn't know where I was, I had no real way to break that delusion until at some point my phone showed up and I could finally make contact with my friends and family (which was offputting to me, since I had full recall of the entire events).

Strangely, I never lost a sense of who I was during my psychosis. I knew my new, I knew my health history, I still knew engineering. I never got violent. I had many conversations with people. But my brain was like am essy chessboard that was being moved in real time, scrabled, as I was having to adjust in real time to the moving pieces and even changing board sizes.

I broke through the delusion a few times on my own. At one point I looked around the hospital and noticed nobody was looking at me. If I had just done all this horrible cosmic level crimes, why weren't people looking at me? Surely I would have been on the news? That's when the little voice with chime in my head, explaning it to me.

Over the next few days, as my sleep and labs improved, the psychosis slowly left me. Once I had full use of my cognitive abilities again, I could easily untangle the mess of the last few days and realize none of it was real on my own. But the emotional damage from thinking I had caused the death of everyone I had loved and care about - my friends my family - and living with that knowledge for days, still haunts me to this day.