Apex man experiences life-threatening effects of COVID-19 weeks after diagnosis

[octoberlib]

Newlyweds Chavez and Ashlea Adams contracted coronavirus from a friend.

The Adamses reported mild symptoms, isolating at home as recommended by their doctors. After the isolation period ended and symptoms subsided, they moved on with the rest of their lives. The bounce-back wasn't as simple for Chavez Adams. Three weeks later, he started to lose momentum.


"I do this trail, it's like a five- or six-mile trail. I do it with my dog. I do it all the time and usually, it's like 45 minutes but this time, I had to call Ashley to come pick me up," he said. The two went directly to urgent care where Chavez Adams' temperature was 105. They went to the ER in Cary. "Took his temperature again: super high," Ashlea Adams said. "Did chest X-ray, drew blood, found haze in his lungs."

Chavez Adams was given pain medication and then sent home, he said. The family would make at least four more trips to the ER and hospitals before trying WakeMed in Apex. A nurse there noticed his extremely high heart rate and admitted him immediately. "His blood pressure bottomed out. His organs started to fail. His cardiac output was extremely low. His heart was failing. They put in a heart pump to save his life," Ashlea Adams recounted.

With his wife by his side, Chavez Adams, a lawyer, spent nearly a week in ICU. According to his medical team, the diagnosis wasn't COVID. In fact, he tested negative. Chavez was suffering from myocarditis, a life-threatening after-effect from the novel coronavirus.

https://abc11.com/health/newly-married-apex-couple-battles-life-threatening-covid-19-case/6789737/?utm_campaign=snd-autopilot

[pansypoo53219]

1. wondering if the future for post covid is shortened.

[octoberlib]

2. For some people, I'm sure. This is one nasty virus.

[pansypoo53219]

5. immunity for those that do fine maybe.

[Baitball Blogger]

3. five or six miles in 45 minutes?

He wasn't walking. He was jogging. The answer: He didn't give his body enough time to heal up.

[octoberlib]

4. maybe but it's been well-documented that coronavirus causes myocarditis even in people who are

non-athletic. So, it probably would have happened, regardless ,at some point.

Here’s the background: Myocarditis appears to result from the direct infection of the virus attacking the heart, or possibly as a consequence of the inflammation triggered by the body’s overly aggressive immune response. And it is not age-specific: In The Lancet, doctors recently reported on an 11-year-old child with multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C)—a rare illness—who died of myocarditis and heart failure. At autopsy, pathologists were able to identify coronavirus particles present in the child’s cardiac tissue, helping to explain the virus’ direct involvement in her death. In fact, researchers are reporting the presence of viral protein in the actual heart muscle, of six deceased patients. Of note is the fact that these patients were documented to have died of lung failure, having had neither clinical signs of heart involvement, nor a prior history of cardiac disease.



Ossama Samuel, associate chief of cardiology at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in New York, told me about a cluster of younger adults developing myocarditis, some of them a month or so after they had recovered from COVID-19. One patient, who developed myocarditis four weeks after believing he had recovered from the virus, responded to a course of steroid treatment only to develop a recurrence in the form of pericarditis (an inflammation of the sac surrounding the heart). A second patient, in her 40s, now has reduced heart function from myocarditis, and a third—an athletic man in his 40s—is experiencing recurring and dangerous ventricular heart rhythms, necessitating that he wear a LifeVest defibrillator for protection. His MRI also demonstrates fibrosis and scarring of his heart muscle, which may be permanent, and he may ultimately require placement of a permanent defibrillator.




Experts estimate that half of myocarditis cases resolve without a chronic complication, but several studies suggest that COVID-19 patients show signs of the condition months after contracting the virus. One non–peer reviewed study, involving 139 health care workers who developed coronavirus infection and recovered, found that about 10 weeks after their initial symptoms, 37 percent of them were diagnosed with myocarditis or myopericarditis—and fewer than half of those had showed symptoms at the time of their scans.

Any such cardiac sequelae lingering weeks to months after the fact is clearly concerning, and we’re seeing more evidence of it. A German study found that 78 percent of recovered COVID-19 patients, the majority of whom had only mild to moderate symptoms, demonstrated cardiac involvement more than two months after their initial diagnoses. Six in 10 were found to have persistent myocardial inflammation. While emphasizing that individual patients need not be nervous, lead investigator Elike Nagel added in an e-mail, “My personal take is that COVID will increase the incidence of heart failure over the next decades.”

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-19-can-wreck-your-heart-even-if-you-havent-had-any-symptoms/