12th Man
Contributor
It's been nearly a year since I left the hospital after 40 days with Covid. My progress has been very much up and down. My lingering effects of this terrible disease is fatigue, getting out of breath quickly and memory loss. Now the good news. I was accepted into UT Southwesters Long Haulers Covid study. I had a four hour appointment last week with a lot of testing. The doc said my lungs & heart look great especially since I was on a vent for 6 days . After looking through all of my test results, his simple explanation was that the heart, lungs and brain just aren't working together properly. There was a ton of physiology behind his findings as he was trying to simplify it a dumb it down for my wife and myself. He said my body is working like an old battery that has a memory problem. When it's fully charged it's only around 20 to 25% or so. Thus my shortness of breath and getting fatigued so quickly, my battery drains quickly. The goal is reset my body back to 90 to 100% full charge.
I'm now on a prescribed workout plan to keep my heart rate around 125/130 for 30 min to an hour a day which means walking or riding my bike and lifting weights. The week of Nov 1st I start five weeks of EEC Flow Therapy. EEC Flow therapy begins by lying down on a padded therapy table, where EECP compression cuffs (similar to blood pressure cuffs) are wrapped around my calves, thighs, lower hips and arms. Then, using an EKG machine, a computer regulates the inflation and deflation of cuffs in rhythm with your heart. It imitates the benefits of passive exercise without straining the heart, leading to improved circulation, increased cardiac capacity, reductions in joint pain, reduced shortness of breath, and increased stamina. The before and after sonogram pictures of the body's arteries and blood vessel changes over three weeks are incredible. The program has now been extended to 5 weeks. They'll take sonogram pics of my heart and arteries after the first two weeks and then weekly to measure progress. During this time, I'll still do my walking, biking and lifting.
Once done with the 5 weeks (25 sessions) he's going to do three pure oxygen treatments in a hyperbaric chamber at two atmospheres. At the end of the three sessions, he'll have a pretty good idea if I can re-enter the water and dive again, or what else I'll need to do to get there. However, he seemed very positive with my prognosis going forward!
Looking forward to the Flow therapy, I'll give updates when I finish!
I'm now on a prescribed workout plan to keep my heart rate around 125/130 for 30 min to an hour a day which means walking or riding my bike and lifting weights. The week of Nov 1st I start five weeks of EEC Flow Therapy. EEC Flow therapy begins by lying down on a padded therapy table, where EECP compression cuffs (similar to blood pressure cuffs) are wrapped around my calves, thighs, lower hips and arms. Then, using an EKG machine, a computer regulates the inflation and deflation of cuffs in rhythm with your heart. It imitates the benefits of passive exercise without straining the heart, leading to improved circulation, increased cardiac capacity, reductions in joint pain, reduced shortness of breath, and increased stamina. The before and after sonogram pictures of the body's arteries and blood vessel changes over three weeks are incredible. The program has now been extended to 5 weeks. They'll take sonogram pics of my heart and arteries after the first two weeks and then weekly to measure progress. During this time, I'll still do my walking, biking and lifting.
Once done with the 5 weeks (25 sessions) he's going to do three pure oxygen treatments in a hyperbaric chamber at two atmospheres. At the end of the three sessions, he'll have a pretty good idea if I can re-enter the water and dive again, or what else I'll need to do to get there. However, he seemed very positive with my prognosis going forward!
Looking forward to the Flow therapy, I'll give updates when I finish!
