INDIANAPOLIS — It’s another puzzle piece in the COVID-19 mystery.
“Long-haul” COVID patients have reported an improvement in their symptoms after receiving the vaccine. It's an unexpected benefit of the vaccine that’s even surprising health experts.
It’s estimated about 10 percent of COVID-19 patients become long-haulers, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Stephanie Buster is one of them.
Last year, Buster was extremely worried about catching COVID because she has asthma. On Dec. 10, 2020, she tested positive after feeling sick for five days. Her husband also tested positive.
“It started with a sinus infection. I had a runny nose, sore throat, a little bit of a cough at first. I didn’t have a fever the whole time I was sick,” she said.
Weeks later, Buster noticed her symptoms weren’t going away. She started feeling more tired, lost her senses of taste and smell and had horrible chest pain.
“Amazingly, I was able to work through it. There were a couple of weeks where I had to take a Wednesday off just to sleep because I couldn’t do five days in a row because the fatigue was so bad. The biggest symptom I had was chest pain,” Buster said. “The best way to describe the pain is someone put a blowtorch down my windpipe and it just went on and on.”
Her husband had the opposite reaction and felt better after a few weeks. But for Buster, her symptoms continued for six months.
“At the time, all I could do is my nebulizer treatments at home and steroids to help open my lungs and airway,” she said.
In May, something of a miracle happened. A couple of weeks after receiving her second dose of the Pfizer vaccine, Buster noticed a significant improvement of her chest pain.
“I didn’t want to say anything because I was nervous it would come back, but it’s been almost a month now and I am getting close to being back to my normal self,” Buster said. “I’m working five days a week. I can go to the store by myself, walk my dogs."
And she’s not alone. It’s estimated that 30 to 40 percent of long haulers who received the vaccine have reported feeling better.
“The CDC has recognized [long-haul symptoms] as a real phenomenon but as we see these symptoms in front of us, the challenge is knowing how best to treat them,” said Dr. Samina Bhumbra, an assistant clinical professor for pediatric infectious disease at Riley Hospital for Children.
The vaccine could be a useful tool in doing so, but health experts are still researching why the vaccine is providing relief for long-term symptoms.
One theory is the vaccine clears out any virus still lingering in the body. Another is that COVID could be causing an autoimmune disease and the vaccine helps reset the immune system.
“We don’t necessarily have any hard evidence as of yet if this is something that is a correlation or if this is actually a treatment,” Bhumbra said.
Buster said she is still dealing with a little bit of fatigue. Her smell and taste came back but are distorted. She is hoping that goes away with time.
Most of all, she is happy her chest pain is gone, saying she wishes she would’ve gotten the vaccine a lot sooner.
“I don’t think it is a coincidence that it just went away. I dealt with it for so long and nothing helped. I just woke up one day and started noticing I feel better,” she said. “If you are experiencing what I did, give it a shot.”
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