Find out below how three adults over the age of 50 regained their strength, mobility and balance, and what were the strategies that helped them overcome the difficult COVID-19 recovery process.
Stronger than ever after learning to use a walker
After recovering from a mild case of VOCID-19 in November 2020, Greg Whitehouse, a manufacturing engineer in Wallingford, Connecticut, suffered complications that manifested in the form of Guillain-Barré syndrome. . In this neurological disorder, the body’s immune system attacks a part of the peripheral nervous system and triggers symptoms ranging from weakness to paralysis. In the case of Whitehouse, what began as numbness in the feet and lower legs progressed in four days until it became paralysis from head to toe. He could see, breathe and speak but was unable to move his body.
After eight days in the hospital, where he received high doses of immunoglobulin therapy, Whitehouse spent 54 days at Gaylord Specialty Healthcare. There he gradually learned to walk again with a walker and to perform daily activities, such as dressing, brushing his teeth and tying his shoes, thanks to three or four sessions of physiotherapy and occupational therapy a day. “I was overwhelmed by my terrible condition and sometimes it seemed like [recuperar la fuerza] it was an unattainable goal because I felt so bad, “says Whitehouse, 61, who is married and has three adult children.” I tried not to think about it and did what the physiotherapists asked me to do, because they had a plan. . The mental challenge was a very important part for me, the people I worked with helped me focus on what I could do instead of what I couldn’t do, and gradually I started to progress “.
As he began to develop his strength, Whitehouse began to concentrate on regaining his mobility. “Doing the exercises required all the physical and mental energy I had,” he adds. “Every day I made a conscious effort to get the slightest improvement so I could share it with my wife.”
In late January he left Gaylord using a walker. A month later he had made the transition to the cane, and the next month he began to walk on his own. He has gradually increased his exercise routine to incorporate walking and light jogging for 30 to 45 minutes several times a week, in addition to exercising with weights at home.
“In fact, I feel stronger than before,” Whitehouse says. She also lost 25 pounds and no longer needs the medications to control the hypertension she has been taking since she was 20 years old. In late June, Whitehouse competed in the Gaylord Gauntlet competition, a 3.3-mile race with 22 hurdles, and ran for much of the course. “If I hadn’t gotten sick and recovered, I would have said‘ I’m too old to participate, ’” he notes. “But after what I’ve overcome, I wanted to face the challenge and prove what I’m capable of.”
A physiotherapist turns to a colleague for help
Prior to contracting COVID-19, Kathy Hidalgo was very physically active. Not only was he always on the move in his job as a physiotherapist, but he also jogged and lifted weights in the gym three to five times a week. She fell ill with COVID-19 on Mother’s Day in 2020. At first, Hidalgo tried to endure the disease at home, but with a fever of 103 ° F she felt so weak that she had to crawl to the bathroom. He then developed bilateral pneumonia and had to spend four days in the hospital’s intensive care unit.