5 ms·
Long Covid (probably a form of ME/CFS triggered by Covid) is one of the worse diseases one can get. It invalidates you as a person physically and mentally and t
by user568439 2y ago
Long Covid (probably a form of ME/CFS triggered by Covid) is one of the worse diseases one can get. It invalidates you as a person physically and mentally and there are no solutions around. At the same time you are gaslighted by doctors and people because there is no clear diagnosis.
My wife is already on her 3rd year and I just could witness first hand how shallow is the knowledge of most doctors, how they have zero curiosity or enthusiasm to help and especially in Europe, how are they extremely averse to try anything with the "do not harm" in mind.
They think that doing nothing is better than trying a non-approved treatment and I'll put an example. My wife had a respiratory tract infection back in October which probably got while going to the GP by the way. With Long Covid her immune system seems very compromised, she never leaves home if it's not imperative because even with a wheelchair is too much effort. I don't attend almost any social event and I take a lot of precautions. Anyway, with the infection she was coughing blood for 3 days and then she was unable to breath properly, having drops of oxygen saturation down to 86% and waking up breathless in the middle of the night.
She documented her symptoms very well including her saturation measurements. The GP just told her to wait for a few weeks for full recovery and everything will be back to normal and he literally said he had no time to read her notes. She asked please to get an oxygen concentrator or at least be sent to a pulmonologist. This request was denied and of course the only option she had was to buy the concentrator on her own which helped a ton. Probably if she got it the 1st year she would be much better by now.
She is taking like 10 supplements and medications, she is using infrared light, oxygen concentrator, wheelchair, special pillows, asthma inhaler, etc... All this helps her to have a bearable existence but guess what, not a single thing was proposed and prescribed by the doctors. Almost everything she takes is based on small studies from internet and experiences from patients. Mostly from the USA where doctors are much more open minded and willing to take risks which is necessary when your default baseline is almost like being a tetraplegic with dementia and chronic pain.
She has to get pretty harmless drugs like Sulodexide (a blood thinner) from other countries in a shady way because the Doctors in the Netherlands won't even prescribe this.
There is some progress in diagnosis or biomarkers detection and some promising studies for cures like monoclonal antibodies, antivirals and others. But meanwhile it's a pure nightmare to live with Long Covid.
- the-dude 2y agoI was halfway through your comment and wondered which country this would be. Well, hello fellow Dutchie. Since my father's death, I say In the Netherlands, doctors only start acting when you are dying. My father's GP let him die of acute leukemia, guessing his severe tiredness had something to do with an onset of diabetes. It was not a single visit. Had no bloodwork done. GP claimed to be specialized in geriatrics. My father was 63. About a day after his last visit my mom took him to the ER, which did bloodwork, and a couple of days later he died ( they tried an emergency chemo ).
- dinkblam 2y ago> In the Netherlands, doctors only start acting when you are dying. this horrible situation is in no way restricted to the Netherlands.
- lnsru 2y agoThere is obviously whole medical system for cash paying upper class. That’s why I am trying to have some cash on hand for medical emergency. Few thousand euros can make a difference of 50 years in treatment methods here in Germany. The outcome may be massively better this way. Sadly I learned this lesson the hard way.
- miningape 2y agoThis is what pisses me off about public medicine. If you're going to provide a service that's so bad I have to save for a private doctor anyway, why in the hell am I paying so much in taxes towards it? Out of the goodness of my heart for others (so they can also receive shitty care)? And yeah the dying comment is 100% true for Denmark too. The doctors have no clue about what preventative treatment is and will just let it fester into something more serious they're forced to treat - diabetes is a huge example of this. From personal experience, I was left waiting for a testicular cancer biopsy for over a year. After the operation I found out if I did have cancer there was a high chance the biopsy would've caused it to progress much more rapidly (as opposed to other methods of checking). So great you let the cancer grow in my nuts for a year, and then you make it more aggressive? wtf?? Thankfully I was diagnosed cancer free.