Five months after contracting and surviving COVID-19, Dr. Bruce Longest has made a full recovery while caring for others suffering with a myriad of reactions to the still mysterious virus.“I was extremely fatigued for about six weeks. It didn’t matter if I slept or not. I just could not get rested,” Dr. Longest said of his personal experience with coronavirus, which he tested positive for in March. “I had those initial symptoms – cough, fever and all that – for a couple of weeks. Then all that went away and I just stayed fatigued. I’m perfectly back to normal now. I see no ill-effects.”
While he feels healthy now, he still has lots of questions regarding the impact of the virus. With less than one year of cases and data, the medical community continues to seek understanding of the long term impact of the pandemic
“I think that’s a very big concern and we won’t know that for quite some time,” Dr. Longest said. “The inflammatory markers in all these patients, especially ones that were sick in the hospital, were so high, you have to wonder if they don’t have some chronic inflammatory changes whether it be Myocarditis (an inflammation of the heart muscle) or kidneys or whatever. It may be years before we know the full extent of (the long term damage of this virus).”
Dr. Longest said his experience with the virus in terms of his patients at both his clinic in Bruce and Baptist-Calhoun hospital in Calhoun City has been unpredictable.
“People are extremely paranoid. I’ve had multiple that required being in the hospital. My biggest observation is the variety of symptoms people have. It affects people in so many different ways,” he explained. “I’ve had patients with nothing but GI symptoms. I’ve had some with nothing but respiratory symptoms and some lost their smell. It’s amazing to see how the same virus has such different consequences to so many different folks.”
“There is no predicting who is going to do what. Certainly the folks with pre-existing heart and lung issues don’t do well. But I’ve also seen lots of people with no problems have real trouble with it.”
Since returning to work, Dr. Longest said the pandemic has had a big impact on the number of patients he has seen in total.
“It has been up and down. Back in the spring when the first cases were showing up, we were as slow as we have ever been,” he said. “The emergency room was slow. The volume was lower than it’s been in years because people were afraid to go to the doctor. When the summer came, the numbers went back to normal, but as school is starting again we’re seeing a lull again. We haven’t been near as busy the last couple weeks.”
“Normally in a 24-hour period in the ER, you would see 15-20 people, but we had days we saw two. At that time, the big concern was the hospitals being overrun. They limited elective surgeries to try and prepare and it was like they over prepared. A lot of places laid nurses off because there was not enough work. But then when they allowed elective surgeries to start back and people started coming back to the emergency room, it’s been blowing and going and you have trouble at times finding somewhere to send patients when you need to.”
The process of seeing patients has also changed.
“Anybody who comes into the office has to be pre-screened – temperature check and a checklist of questions. Anybody we even suspect with COVID-19 we send through the drive-thru and we go out with full PPE – mask, shield, gown, gloves, whole ball of wax.”
Reflecting on the pandemic thus far as a physician, Dr. Longest said it’s the unknowns that are so overwhelming.
“It was unexpected to me the sheer volume this could be. I’ve seen flu epidemics and it’s always been something you could get a handle on,” he said. “It’s been an incredible experience dealing with a disease we had never dealt with, the treatment strategies changing every day. Just trying to keep up with it. I was getting emails every day from different sources and not always the same recommendations. Trying to figure out what to do when it’s something you’ve never dealt with before.”
The world has changed since the onset of
COVID-19 with the required wearing of masks, increased hand washing, sanitizing, avoidance of large crowds. All of these changes could become permanent to some degree.
“I foresee visitation in hospitals and nursing homes always being restricted. Visitors are going to have to be screened. The temperature checks and those kinds of things are here to stay as much as I hate it. You may even have to wear a mask in a nursing home from now on,” Dr. Longest said.
“Something else that’s really bothersome to me, is with these restrictions at the nursing home, and you have to have them, but it’s sad to see these elderly suffer with psychiatric issues from loneliness, not seeing their family, not able to leave their rooms. It’s sad to see what it’s done to them. The saddest thing is people who have COVID, and are dying of COVID, are dying alone.”
Dr. Longest said he hopes everyone uses this experience to make personal changes going forward.
“I hope people are more likely to get vaccines than they have been for pneumonia, flu, stuff we know is preventable,” he said. “Seeing what this pandemic has done, I hope people will be a little more diligent with preventative health.”