Tag Archives: rest

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Long Covid fatigue and overdoing

I’ve been reading journal articles about Long Covid. The three primary symptoms are fatigue, shortness of breath and brain symptoms. Mostly brain fog. Then there is a long long list of other symptoms.

For the fatigue, the journals are recommended graded increase in activity “without triggering a fatigue crash”.

Now, that is all well and good, except it’s a moving target. The amount of activity one can do is NOT static.

I have something that caused CFS-ME. My fast twitch muscles came back on line sometime between Christmas and New Years. GREAT! Then I was helping a sick friend until January ninth. I flew home and then there is all the unpacking and bills and catching up and sweeping up catfur dust elephants. Finally I got to exercise. I walked a couple miles on the beach one day and then around town with a friend the next.

Which crashed me. The third day I spent lying on the couch. My muscles basically were ALL hurting and saying, “We hate you.”

The fast twitch are back on line but they are weak as newborn kittens. For the first two days I felt strong and normal. The third day I felt like a steamroller had gone over me.

So did I do the wrong thing? Well, no. I won’t know what I can and can’t do it unless I do it, right? After four rounds (or more) of pneumonia with muscle weirdness, I can tell when it’s improving. Then I have to rebuild the working muscles. Also my slow twitch posture muscles are frankly pissed off and have been doing all the work and are not very interested in working with the fast twitch when they first come on line. “Where have YOU been? We’ve been doing YOUR work AND OURS.” I have to learn to walk again.

I was doing well with pulmonary rehab in the fall, building up on the treadmill twice a week, until I got my flu shot and then my Covid booster. Well, they are supposed to raise antibodies. Unfortunately they raised the ones that make my fast twitch muscles not work. Muscle blocker antibodies. I am just glad that my slow twitch work, because I sympathize hugely with the people who end up lying in bed. It’s still inconvenient, difficult to explain and annoying.

At any rate, gentle graded increase in activity is all very well as advice. But do you control everything that happens in your life? I don’t. Someone gets sick, the mail goes awry, a billing company changed their address and I didn’t get the memo. It all takes energy. Some days I am going to overdo, especially when I feel better. And it rather sucks to lie around the next day, but it is ok.

Over the last week I had a friend up from Portland. We walked three days running. On the third day we walked paths from my house to the lighthouse and back. About 5-6 miles. I was not quite limping when I got home, but I knew I could rest the next day. My muscles got HUNGRY and are continuing to improve.

So when your doctor tells you “graded activity to avoid fatigue crashes”, remember that it is not wholly controllable because life is not wholly controllable. Some days you will do great and others, well, hmmm. That was too much.

Blessings.

https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2022/1100/long-covid.html

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/index.html

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rest day

I have been writing daily for a long time but pushed from the start of Novemeber and completed Nanowrimo, 50,000 words and a very rough novel. My shoulders hurt! They have been stiff and sore for days! It is time for a rest day!

Hooray for rest and may you have a rest day too.

One time we were visiting very dear friends in California. We were up late with a dinner. In the morning people got up and floated around quietly in bathrobes. Eventually we decided that it was a bathrobe day and we would lounge around lazily for the entire day. It was very relaxed and felt mildly wicked and we all enjoyed it.

Have a wonderful Sunday.

Oh, for the Ragtag Daily Prompt: rest.

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sleep and defiance

Oh, gosh, CNN is making everyone panic about sleep again: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/08/health/sleep-deprivation-wellness/index.html

Don’t buy it. It used to be 8 hours. Now they are saying 7 in this article. SLEEP AT LEAST 7 HOURS OR YOUR BRAIN WILL MELT.

Nope. The media likes us to panic because it sells papers and gets shares. Don’t buy the hoopla.

After all, I took call at night for 30 years and my brain has not melted. (Ok, if you disagree, post your own blog, heh, heh.) Starting third year of medical school. Sometimes it was every third night, sometimes every fourth. We were often up and awake and working for much of the night and then through the next day. If we had to be ready for rounds at 8 am, we had to be there earlier to see the patients, check the lab work, check any studies, drink a gallon of coffee and then be coherent on rounds, where the faculty physician might quiz us about the nineteen causes of high potassium. Uh. Taking too much potassium is one. Kidney failure, diabetic ketoacidosis, etc, etc.

I made up the number nineteen.

Anyhow, I was a sleep rather than eat person. If we got a break, I would go to sleep and skip food. The bad rotations were obvious because my weight would drop. We’d meet for “nutrition rounds” in the morning. I would skip lunch, hoping to have it at home post call, but the list might have things added even as I ran around checking things off. At last I would stop for lunch at 2 or 3 or 4 because my brain was no longer functioning.

Doesn’t sound very healthy, does it?

Here is a post on sleep from 2015: https://drkottaway.com/2015/01/08/sleep/. I sent a copy to our sleep specialist and he liked it.

When I got my flu vaccination and covid booster a month ago, it hit me pretty hard. I am sleeping as I normally do at night, for 6.5-7 hours. But I also started napping, once or twice a day. I was sleeping 11 or 12 hours total daily. I canceled pulmonary rehabilitation exercise, because it wiped me out. I was starting to feel better after three weeks, so I restarted pulmonary rehab. I promptly slept 12 hours a day again and my muscles gave me HELL.

So what in the heck IS this? Well, healing. My body is knocking me out to do repair work. It’s sending a pretty clear message that running on a treadmill is not ok right now. My immune system is busy making antibodies and is saying HEY WE DO NOT HAVE ENERGY TO SPARE FOR ANYTHING ELSE. This is sort of annoying except that having had four rounds of really bad pneumonia, the last one requiring oxygen for a year, still on oxygen to sing and for heavy exertion, I am willing to listen to my body. It is annoying, but: my mother, father and sister are dead, so even though I am struggling some, I’m not dead. It’s all relative, right?

When I had pneumonia #3 (2014) and pneumonia #4 (2021), both times part of the healing is sleeping twelve hours a day. I went back to work six months after the 2014 one and promptly slept twelve hours a night. I was seeing 4-5 patients a day and could barely do that. I went into denial about chronic fatigue, but I knew I had it. NO WAY, I AM TOUGH. Well, I am tough, but that means chronic fatigue and not dead.

I do not worry about sleeping 7 hours a night or 8 hours. I sleep when I get sleepy. Naps are fine and one gets to relearn napping after age 50 or 60 and it’s ok. If you need to stay awake after lunch, have a small lunch and no alcohol. Alcohol is not good for sleep in the long term and neither is marijuana. Benzodiazepines are worse than either. Ambien and those drugs are approved for “short term” use, meaning two weeks. Great. We don’t know what it does if you are on it for years, but some of us note that those drugs are closely related to the benzodiazepines. I think the most addictive drug is tobacco, followed by benzodiazepines and then methamphetamines. That is from asking patients and observation over 30 years. There are individual quirks though, and I have had people say, “Alcohol is no problem but the first time I was given oxycodone I wanted more.” Sometimes there is a bit of denial in those statements.

The photograph is me doing my second sleep study last week. I scored. Um, or rather, it was a positive test. Sleep apnea, darn. I am now waiting for my bipap machine. The funny bit is that I had to drive an hour to the lab. I was supposed to be there at 8. I got there an hour early because I get really tired at night. The tech let me in and wired me up. “But,” she said, “you can’t go to sleep until 9, because I have another patient and they are not here yet.” “Ok,” I said. I read for a while in the chair, put my head back and (don’t tell) fell asleep.

She came back in, did the final connections and then left. There is a ceiling camera and a disembodied voice. We tested the connections. “Flex and extend your right foot.” “Now breath through your nose.” I did and immediately fell asleep. She woke me, “Breath through your mouth now.” “Was I asleep?” “Yes.” The wires didn’t bother me much, though I had to surface part way during the night to change position.

I’ve slept sitting up in hospital meetings. I fell asleep standing against the wall in medical school. It is really a blessing to be able to fall asleep.

The year my father died, I had a terrible time falling asleep. His will was very out of date, written 40+ years before. It was a mess. His house had 13 years worth of unopened mail. I used Jon Kabat Zinn’s Mindfulness Meditation tape to fall asleep. But I used it in a rather weird way. He has a section where he says “Do NOT fall asleep.” It was a body scan. I would think, hey, you can’t tell ME what to do, and I would always fall asleep during it. So there, Dr. Kabat Zinn. Thank you.

The pandemic is enormously stressful, not to mention all of the other things. You can still relax though. What relaxes YOU? Stupid animal videos? A walk around a yard or park? Dancing in your kitchen? Knitting? Reading your absolutely most boring textbook? Put the phone and the television and the computer away at least one hour before you want to sleep and preferably two hours.

And here, to relax you, are pictures of sleep: https://drkottaway.com/2018/04/30/zzzzzz/

Blessings.

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Covid-19: Long Haul III

The CDC has guidelines for Long Covid and it can qualify for disability in the United States.

Here: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/index.html

And here: “As of July 2021, “long COVID,” also known as post-COVID conditions, can be considered a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Learn more: Guidance on “Long COVID” as a Disability Under the ADA, Section“

Here is the list of “most common” symptoms from the CDC:

General symptoms

  • Tiredness or fatigue that interferes with daily life
  • Symptoms that get worse after physical or mental effort (also known as “post-exertional malaise”)
  • Fever

Respiratory and heart symptoms

  • Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath
  • Cough
  • Chest pain
  • Fast-beating or pounding heart (also known as heart palpitations)

Neurological symptoms

  • Difficulty thinking or concentrating (sometimes referred to as “brain fog”)
  • Headache
  • Sleep problems
  • Dizziness when you stand up (lightheadedness)
  • Pins-and-needles feelings
  • Change in smell or taste
  • Depression or anxiety

Digestive symptoms

  • Diarrhea
  • Stomach pain

Other symptoms

  • Joint or muscle pain
  • Rash
  • Changes in menstrual cycles

There are recommendations for a work up by physicians. Depending on symptoms, this may include labs, ECG, echocardiogram (heart ultrasound), CT scan and other tests.

A friend has just gone through those four tests . They are “normal” except for her heart rate. At rest her heart rate is 70 with a normal oxygen level. Walking, her heart rate jumps to 135. Over 100 is abnormal in this athlete who is NOT exerting heavily.

So WHAT is going on with NORMAL testing? I think this is “Covid-19 Viral Pneumonia”, a complication of Covid-19, just as “Influenza Viral Pneumonia” is a complication of influenza. Ralph Netter MD has an illustration of lungs from a person who died of influenza viral pneumonia: the lungs are swollen and inflamed and bruised. WHY is the testing “normal” then? The swelling is throughout the lungs, so a chest x-ray sees it as all the same density and a CT scan also sees it as all the same density. The lungs may have mildly decreased breath sounds, but the sounds are even throughout the lungs. The useful TEST is a walk test. I have tested patients with “walking pneumonia” in clinic for years: get a resting heart rate and oxygen level. Then have my patient walk up and down the hall three times and sit back down. Watch the heart rate and oxygen level. If the heart rate jumps 30 beats up or is over 100, the person needs to continue rest until the heart rate stays under 100 or jumps less than 30 beats. It is important to observe the heart rate until they recover. Sometimes the oxygen saturation will drop as the heart rate comes down, and some people qualify for oxygen. Steroids do not seem to work for this. The length of time to healing is not totally surprising, because a lobar pneumonia that is visible on chest xray takes 6-8 weeks to fully clear. It is not too amazing that a bad walking pneumonia could also take 6 weeks or more to clear. If the person returns to work too soon, they prolong the lung inflammation and they are at risk for exhaustion and for a secondary pneumonia. The treatment is REST REST REST and support.

Do they need oxygen? Currently oxygen is covered only if the person’s oxygen saturation drops down to 88%. However, I think that oxygen would help recovery and make them less exhausted. With my first walking pneumonia, which was influenza, my walking heart rate was 135 and my resting heart rate was 100. Both were abnormal for me. Neither I nor my physician could figure it out. This was in 2003. I did look in my Netter book: I took one look at the painting of the influenza lungs and shut the book. “Oh.” I thought. “That’s why I can’t breathe.” The image is here, though I wish it were bigger.

It took two months for my heart rate to come down, the lung swelling to improve, and me to return to work. I read the text of Dr. Netter’s image a year later and then I read an entire book about the 1918-1919 influenza. Since then I have walked people who come in complaining of exhaustion after a “cold” or “bad cough”. Viruses can cause this and so can bacteria: mycoplasma pneumonia, chlamydia pneumonia, pneumococcal pneumonia, legionella and strep A. If the fever is gone, the infection has probably resolved, but it still can take days or weeks for the lung tissue to recover.

For Covid-19, I would add a third test: walking with weights. We test cardiac patients by asking if they can carry two bags of groceries up a flight of stairs. That is 3 Mets, a measure of the heart load. We need to measure the lung load as well. If the lung tissue is swollen, the amount of airspace is cut down and can be half normal. The heart attempts to take up the slack. The person may tolerate a heart rate of 135 for a while, but it is like running a marathon. If they are older or have heart disease, this can trigger a heart attack. I would walk the person carrying hand weights, and see the recovery.

Also, brain fog is unsurprising. If your oxygen level is borderline, it is darn hard to think. I write really strange songs when I am hypoxic. I get goofy and feel weird. The fast heart rate also feels like anxiety: I think that the body is trying to tell me to rest.

The definition of Long Covid is symptoms after 30 days. Please see your physician if you are still ill and continue to have symptoms.

Blessings.

Here is a recent article about T-cells and inflammation in the lungs of Covid-19 patients: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8460308/

and this: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2020.589380/full

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Covid-19: Hope for Long Haul

I want to offer hope to the people with Long Covid-19. Having been through four bad pneumonias, with increasingly long recovery times, and now disabled for doing Family Medicine, I have experience to share. First I want to talk about chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia.

I am a piler, not a filer. Including in my brain. I have been adding to the chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia pile since I was in medical school.

In residency a new patient questions me. “Do you believe in chronic fatigue?” he says, nearly hostile.

“Yes,” I reply, “but I don’t know what it is or what causes it or how to fix it.”

For years different causes were suggested. Often infections: EBV, mononucleosis, lyme disease. Some people didn’t have any infection. I did note even in residency that my chronic fatigue patients all had one thing in common: they were exhausting.

Does that sound terrible? They were all type A, high achievers, often super high energy. Often they got sick or crashed when they were working three jobs, or working 20 hours a day on their own business, or doing something that sounded insanely exhausting and unsustainable. And most of them wanted that back. “Ok, wait. You were working 20 hours a day, seven days a week, got sick and THAT is what you want to get back to?”

None of the chronic fatigue people seemed to be type B.

Eventually I read that one in ten people with ANY severe infection can get chronic fatigue.

Then I work with the U of Washington Telepain Clinic, on zoom. They start studying functional MRIs of the brains of people with fibromyalgia.

They use a thumbscrew. They put a measurable amount of pressure on a person with no fibromyalgia. The person reports 3-4 out of 10 pain. The brain lights up a certain amount in the pain centers on the MRI. The doctors can SEE it. Then they test the fibromyalgia people with the same amount of thumbscrew pressure. The fibromyalgia people report 8-9/10 pressure and they are not lying. The pain centers in the brain light up correspondingly more. So they ARE feeling 8-9/10 pain.

Is this a muscle problem? A brain problem? Or both?

It appears to be both. Chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia and other disorders with pain out of proportion to the physical findings were being called “central pain processing disorders”.

I thought of chronic fatigue as a sort of switch. As if at a certain level of stress or exhaustion or infection the body would throw a switch. And force the person to rest.

I wondered if the type B people just rested and got over it, while the type A people fought it like tigers. Which seemed to make it worse.

And now we have Covid-19. The study getting my attention is saying that 20%, or 1 in five people age 18-64, have Long Haul symptoms. Over 65 it is 25%, one in four. And it can happen in people with no preexisting conditions. Preexisting conditions or not, this sucks. The two biggest complaints are lung related and muscle related.

I have chronic fatigue following my third pneumonia in 2014. I might be just a little type A. I went back to work too soon (6 months after the pneumonia) and after a half day would crash asleep at 3 pm. For another 6 months. Now that I have had the fourth pneumonia and have been off for a year and been on oxygen, I feel better than I have since before 2014, even though I still need oxygen part time. Guess I was in denial about the chronic fatigue. NOT ME!

So, dear reader, learn from me and don’t be like me. The biggest thing that I have had to get through my thick type A skull is that when my body wants rest, I need to rest. This can be hella annoying, as my son would say. I have to pay attention to my energy level and decide what to do. And some of my precious energy has to go to things like laundry and paying bills! How very frustrating. My markers are energy level and also pulse. My pulse tells me when I need oxygen and when I am really sick. With the first pneumonia back in 2003, influenza, my resting pulse stayed at 100. My normal then was about 65. When I stood up, my pulse went to 135. It was EXHAUSTING to stand up. I had to rest half way up one flight of stairs. It was hard to walk two blocks to pick my daughter up from primary school. And I looked fine. Neither my doctor nor I could figure it out. I finally guessed that it was lung tissue swelling and hoped it would go down eventually. It did, but it was a full two months and my doctor partners thought I was malingering. I tried not to wish it on them. It sucked and I felt awful back at work, but my pulse had finally come down. We even did a heart ultrasound, but all it showed was a fast heart rate. My chest film looked “normal”, because the tissue swelling is throughout the lungs, so it cannot be seen on a chest xray. It was very weird, but I recovered. And all the descriptions of Long Covid sound like my lung swelling. Fast heart rate, difficulty breathing, muscle pain and terrible fatigue. Go back to the couch.

Go back to the couch and wait. Do what you have to but if your heart rate is over 100 when you get up, you have to rest. Otherwise you will prolong it. Seriously.

More later. Peace me and sending love and peace.

Anna’s hummingbirds can survive below freezing temperatures by slowing their metabolism at night, until it warms up in the morning. Talk about resting!