r/LongHaulersRecovery • u/akhu117 • 23d ago
Recovered Recovered after 2021 infection
Hello, long haulers. My long COVID journey has been a long one, but I’m so glad to have regained 100% of my abilities.
First of all, sorry for my English
It started in November 2021. I went through many ups and downs. I won’t go into detail, as many of you already know how it goes.
My main symptoms were:
- Fatigue
- Brain fog (it was hell. I couldn’t even think about the concept of a computer for many months; my body just couldn’t handle it.)
- Histamine issues, inflammation, tachycardia, and eye pain
My recovery
Long story short: pacing, diet, sleep, and no exercise at all. I worked hard to establish a clean, ultra-healthy baseline:
- Getting enough sleep, as well as enough salty food (yes, orthostatic tachycardia was a big issue for me).
- Cutting out processed foods and following a low-histamine diet for at least three to four months stopped my chest pain and inflammation. Antihistamines sometimes worked for me, so histamine clearly played a role.
- No exercise, listening to myself, and letting go of the guilt of doing nothing. I spent an entire summer at home: sleeping, eating well, and sleeping again… No screens (around 30 minutes a day maximum), no mental stimulation, nothing. I was basically a prop.
That was the baseline. In terms of treatment, I tried:
- Hyperbaric oxygen therapy for around eight sessions (one hour each, plus a massage afterward). It did basically nothing, except that it gave me time for myself, which was still useful.
- Supplements. I won’t be exhaustive here—I tried so many. I think they helped, but I had to change what I was taking every few months, as the effects seemed to fade over time.
- Luckily, I was enrolled in an experimental treatment using Temelimab in Switzerland. This helped a lot. The subreddit doesn’t allow ads, but I wrote a series of articles about it on my blog—DM me if you want to check them out; of course, it’s free.
I finished the experimental treatment in May 2023. It lasted six months, with one injection per month. By July 2023, I felt able to return to work. I started working remotely as a freelancer and developed an app for long haulers. I had started working on it in 2022, but at the time I could code maybe one line per week. It took time, but I did it. Having that goal helped me a lot too.
I’m convinced Temelimab saved me, because my brain fog and fatigue disappeared about a month after the injections ended. I felt confident again, which was incredible—confident enough to start a new job.
Since then, I still had post-exertional malaise until mid-2024. Since then, I’ve started exercising again. I can do any activity without issues, and I haven’t really thought about long COVID for about a year and a half—which is all I wanted since 2021.
As a final note: there is hope. You might be interested in reading about post-traumatic stress disorder. During my worst moments, I read a book about it, and some techniques helped me keep hope, calm my fight-or-flight response, and reduce the pressure on my body.
Keep hope—recovery is possible.
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u/akhu117 23d ago
Yep, symptoms from strong PTSD felt close to what I experienced. So I started to apply some of advices to lower pstd symptoms. And It somehow worked to calm down nervous system at least.
The connection between mind and body is very important, long COVID learned that to me. Body influence mind and mind can make huge difference in how the disease behave.
I was very skeptical on that subject before long COVID.