Many of the 1.7 million Americans who’ve contracted coronavirus deal with lingering symptoms and a life unrecognizable from the one they had before.
An avid skier will lose eight of his fingers and three toes due to complications from the coronavirus. A 27-year-old who beat the virus is plagued by panic attacks and depression. A Florida survivor struggles with memory and vision loss.
Deaths by COVID-19, the disease brought on by the coronavirus, has garnered much of the nation’s attention, especially as U.S. fatalities surpassed 100,000 this week. But many of the more than 1.7 million Americans who’ve contracted the disease are confronting puzzling, lingering symptoms, including aches, anxiety attacks, night sweats, rapid heartbeats, breathing problems and loss of smell or taste.
Many are living a life unrecognizable from the one they had before. Here are their stories.
At home with tubes in his nose Angel Andujar, left, in a photo taken before he contracted the coronavirus and, right, after he returned home from the hospital. Andujar, 73, who is originally from Puerto Rico and lives in Clifton, N.J., spent 18 days in a hospital fighting the virus.
Angel Andujar, left, in a photo taken before he contracted the coronavirus and, right, after he returned home from the hospital. Andujar, 73, who is… Provided
Lately, Angel Andujar, 73, can’t walk from his bedroom to his living room without getting winded. Tubes in his nose feed oxygen to lungs recently ravaged by COVID-19.
Andujar spent 18 days in a Clifton, New Jersey, hospital, struggling to survive after catching the coronavirus. Initially, recovery at home was tough. He would sleep only a few hours a night before waking up, gasping for air. He stayed away from the MSNBC broadcasts he once watched regularly because too much COVID-19 coverage made him anxious.
Andujar, a retired respiratory therapist originally from Puerto Rico, is used to keeping busy: working on projects around the house, cutting the grass, visiting his grandchildren. All those have been put on hold.
He doesn’t know if he’ll have long-term lung damage. For now, he’s enjoying being surrounded by friends and family. Earlier this month, he watched through a bedroom window as his grandson Miguel celebrated his fourth birthday in his yard. A neighbor, a retired fireman, parked a fire truck on the street and ran the siren, to Miguel’s delight.
“As long as I have my daughter and grandkids, I don’t need anything else,” he says. “That’s enough for me.”
Two months after she relocated to Denver, Ravi Turman thought her nagging cough was residual altitude sickness or a bad cold.
She checked into a hospital emergency room on March 22, where she collapsed into a coma and spent 10 days on a ventilator, wrecked with COVID-19.
Lanski, 49, a 9/11 survivor, spent 13 days in a New Jersey hospital battling the coronavirus. Her fever spiked to 103 degrees, she had bad chills and it felt like “something was sitting on my chest,” she says. Doctors debated putting her on a ventilator but decided to keep her on oxygen instead. She slowly recovered.
Now back home, Lanski worries if the rapid heartbeat and fatigue that followed her home are permanent.
During a recent group Bible reading, Rathel squinted to see the words on the page. He dragged his finger under each word. And, after memorizing the books of the Bible as a child, he now struggles to list the four gospels. “John, Luke…,” he says. “I can’t remember.”