Calgary-based physiotherapy program aims to breathe new life into long-COVID patients

Physiotherapy program aims to help long-COVID patients A Calgary physiotherapy program is helping people whose COVID-19 symptoms go on for months. Mark Villani reports.

CALGARY — When Yanelli Torres was diagnosed with COVID-19 last December, she thought her symptoms would quickly go away, but she continues to live in pain.

The 36-year-old Calgary woman contracted the disease while visiting family members in Mexico over the Christmas break.

“Within three days we were all down in bed, in the hospital,” she said. “The fatigue is the biggest challenge and the chest pain will never go away.”

Torres spent a week recovering, but the after-effects of the virus remained with her, even after she tested negative again and returned back home.

She later found out through her doctor that she had ‘long-COVID’ syndrome – a term used to describe about 10 to 30 per cent of people infected with the virus, who experience symptoms longer than four weeks and even months afterwards.

“I’m not even able to walk up the stairs anymore. I have to take a break a few times just to get to the top and my legs are always so heavy and it’s difficult taking care of my three kids,” she said.

“Foods that I have been able to eat all my life, I would eat them now and suddenly I would have hives and a big rash all over my body.”

Torres continued to struggle with breathing, going through dizzy spells and eventually experiencing tingling and numbness on her face.

Those feelings were progressing, but slowly started to improve once she enrolled in a program to help relieve her pain.

BREATHE, SPEAK, PACE

A Calgary physiotherapist is recognizing the extreme struggle of long-COVID patients by creating an online program over Zoom calls to help them manage their symptoms.

Jessica DeMars, who owns Breathe Well Physio, developed the eight-week ‘Breathe, Speak, Pace’ educational program working alongside Torres and six other patients at the beginning of March.

The course is entirely virtual due to the pandemic, but also the fact that many long-COVID patients don’t have the energy to leave their homes.

“We’re teaching them some breathing strategies, both to deal with shortness of breath and also as a form of recovery so we don’t want to be wasting any extra energy,” DeMars said.

“So it’s a lot around those self-management strategies and we have a second arm for about half of those participants that are experiencing voice issues and they will work with our voice health specialist.”

DeMars is also guiding participants on how to navigate healthcare to ensure they receive the right support. She adds that rehab professionals will soon be overwhelmed with long-term symptom patients if they don’t receive care in a timely manner.

“We’re not just talking at them, but they’re learning and able to apply these strategies because about 40 per cent of the patients we’re dealing with have been sick for over a year now.”

“At the end of eight weeks, are long COVID symptoms gone? Absolutely not. But for many, they’ll have a better idea of how to manage it and how to live through what’s going on right now.”

Breathe, Speak, Pace has also partnered up with the Synaptic Spinal Cord Injury and Neuro Rehabilitation in Calgary.

Executive director Uyen Nguyen is helping patients focus on how to manage the mental struggles of long-COVID such as brain fog, memory loss and mental health aspects of the condition.

“It’s not just about the physical aspect of it, there’s so much that’s cognitive so if this is mismanaged early on, there is a high risk that there could be permanent damage or it prolongs their healing and recovery,” Nguyen said.

“Long COVID is where we’re going to see the increased demand in the community and if we’re looking at what this means to our health-care system, this is the group that needs help and needs help immediately.”

The ‘Breathe, Speak, Pace’ program has accepted 16 more patients for the second running of its eight-week online program beginning on May 27.

The program is funded entirely by donations and costs $80 for participants to acquire a wearable heart-rate monitor and information package.

'IT'S CHANGED MY LIFE'

Long-COVID patients like Yanelli Torres were skeptical about the ‘Breathe, Speak, Pace’ program at first, but she soon discovered a new lease on life.

“The first week of the program, doing all these breathing techniques, I was so drained that I had to nap after, but the more that you practiced, the better I understood why this is happening and what works for me,” Torres said.

At the start of the program, Torres could barely walk more than a block outside of her home, but now she’s able to complete a 15-minute walk around her neighbourhood.

Running around the house to care for her eight-year-old and 13-year old boys was also a challenge, but now she’s slowly starting to keep up.

“It really helps you in a way to understand yourself better and it’s changed my life.”

UNDERSTANDING LONG-COVID

Medical experts are still working to understand the aftereffects of Long-COVID Syndrome, which has upwards of 100 symptoms.

That’s according to Dr. Nisreen Alwan, who is an associate professor at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom.

In a recent survey, she found that the most common symptoms are exhaustion, headache, shortness of breath, cough, muscle aches, fever and chills.

Cognitive ongoing symptoms have also been described as brain fog, memory or concentration problems, and confusion.

Research on Long COVID in Canada remains scarce, but the office for National Statistics in the United Kingdom has found that an estimated 1.1 million people in private households are reporting long-term symptoms of the virus.

Among a sample of over 20,000 study participants who tested positive for COVID-19 between April 26, 2020, and March 6, 2021, 13.7 per cent continued to experience for at least 12 weeks.