COVID-19 - normal aging or long haul symptoms?

March 23, 2021 10:05 AM

I had COVID-19 March of last year with fever, body aches, rash, fatigue, and neurological issues as my primary symptoms -- no problems breathing or hospitalization. For months, people would ask me, "do you have any long-haul COVID symptoms?," and I would reply "No, no, I'm very, very lucky." Now, over a year later, I'm experiencing symptoms and am worried they might be related to having had COVID.

For the last 2 months, I have had increasing muscle and joint pain--pain I've never experienced before. My shoulders are achy and painful, I feel carpal tunnel stabs in my lower arms. At night, I feel stabbing pains in my toes, fingers and back aches that can make it difficult to fall asleep. Strangely, these symptoms are worse by the end of day. While I can feel "stiff" in the morning, and my shoulders and neck have limited mobility, I don't feel pain until in the afternoon and evening. I take the supplement Injuv, a hyaluronic acid, for better skin, but it's also supposed to be good for joints. I noticed that when I ran out of Injuv recently, the pain became much, much worse and more noticeable. No swollen joints or any redness. The other possible symptom that I've had since COVID is some numbness in my fingers and toes, but I did experience that before COVID. Also, my ankles started becoming slightly swollen last summer.

I know you are not my doctor, and I'll be making an appointment soon, but could these symptoms be related to having had COVID? I'm 46, so is this just a result of me getting older? Also, can you help me with some keywords -- are these symptoms representative of arthritis, neuropathy, or something else? If you've experienced something similar what helps?

posted by cardamom to Health & Fitness (12 answers total)

I can only offer you a couple bits of anecdata. I have not had COVID, I am 49 and in menopause (as in post-symptomatic). I have been having a lot of nerve-y discomfort in my hands, probably related to waking up many mornings with my hands clenched into fists against my chest? I was also waking up repeatedly trying to get what felt like the right neck support. My pillows have taken quite a beating over the past year of crap sleep, and we've forgotten to rotate our mattress all year because time no longer has any meaning.

I got a new pillow (actually I pandemic-bought a $150 pillowcube, but no regrets) and it is improving.

I definitely put on an abrupt set of additional isolation pounds and it had obvious effects on my knees in particular, plus hips. I was already fat and my joints have always been pretty good, I think it was just the suddenness of the change. But as an alternate warning, a family member developed psoriatic arthritis in early middle age and it presented as a number of seemingly unrelated joint pains all around the same time, which was his first full-on flare occurring. Bloodwork to look for inflammation markers can maybe shed some light on whether you are experiencing mere creakiness or some kind of systemic change.

Probably the easiest troubleshooting first steps would be to improve your sleeping and daytime posture, gently increase the amount of movement (I really like dr_jacobdpt for basic daily PT-type mobility stretches) and exercise, and track any changes from there. See your doctor, get the bloodwork, and don't be surprised if the next step there is wait 3 months and do bloodwork again.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:25 AM on March 23, 2021 [1 favorite]

One thing to ask the doctor about may be fibromyalgia, which can be brought on by a viral infection. I have it and all those symptoms sound familiar, though fibro is often worse in the morning.

In the meantime, since you mentioned supplements, the rheumatologist who diagnosed me with fibro told me that the supplements which have been shown by studies to help with this kind of pain are turmeric and fish oil. I also take Vitamin D, which helps.

As for long COVID, the people I know who have experienced it did not have a long period between COVID infection and onset of long COVID - they basically got COVID and just never fully recovered. However, I know there's a lot of variation and it might be good to join one of the long COVID online support groups (I believe Body Politic is the biggest one) to see if there are others experiencing what you are.
posted by lunasol at 11:00 AM on March 23, 2021 [3 favorites]

If fixing your sleeping arrangements - mattress and pillow - don't help, you might want to escalate this to a doctor and see if your spine is doing ok. I say this as a 46-year-old who apparently has the spine of an 85-year-old, with arthritis and bone spurs and congenital stenosis. My symptoms are numbness and tingling and occasional shooting pains, especially in the hands, and also weakness in other muscles, due to my spinal cord being pinched. After recently having some excruciating pain radiating down my right arm, my doctor sent me off to get an MRI and I am now in the care of a specialist and have had PT to help strengthen some muscles.
posted by PussKillian at 11:44 AM on March 23, 2021

Cardamom, have you been vaccinated yet? Some people who had COVID and have suffered from long-haul symptoms have reported that being vaccinated has led to remarkable improvements in their conditions.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 11:47 AM on March 23, 2021 [7 favorites]

You're describing the same pains I had for most of 2019--sharp pangs all over my body, at a level that made it hard to sleep. Try getting your vitamin levels tested. I'm also peri-/post-menopausal and was deficient in vitamin D. I went on a short boosting dose and the pains disappeared within days, and now I just take maintenance levels. It's an easy enough place to start looking for a solution, even though it took four types of doctors and multiple visits for me to be diagnosed.
posted by cocoagirl at 12:03 PM on March 23, 2021

Ianad! A lot of your symptoms sound like they could be related to your cervical spine... a lot of people will have changed their lifestyle and posture around the time COVID hit (more time on the screen looking at the phone etc.) and an unstable cervical spine or blushing disc can cause all the upper body problems you describe. And I’ve found that after you have this for a while the rest of your body gets put of whack too. To me the fact that it’s worse at the end of the day indicates this too because you just feel worse after hours of walking around or living life if your spine is out of whack. So definitely go to the docs but don’t panic yet and be careful of your posture.
posted by pairofshades at 12:06 PM on March 23, 2021 [2 favorites]

There was a good article on this in the Atlantic. It's being studied at either Mayo, or Johns Hopkins, one of those.
Sorry I couldn't find it. My number of free reads ran out.
posted by Enid Lareg at 4:44 PM on March 23, 2021

A lot of long haulers describe having a relapse at around 11-12 months, so you're on track for that. And some people also develop symptoms many months after Covid, like shortness of breath, that they didn't even have when they had Covid.

The various web forums are somewhat helpful but hard to wade through: one consistent takeaway, however, is that drinking tons of electrolytes really helps. You might also try magnesium supplements at night if you're not already taking them.
posted by luckdragon at 6:00 PM on March 23, 2021

Long-haul symptoms can hit people who had even very mild or asymptomatic patients. Some symptoms appear after a period of time or recur somewhat regularly in "waves". The term for this is recrudescence. Here is a pretty solid rundown and summary.

Also joint pain is definitely a known long-haul symptom. Not sure if symptoms appearing a whole year later is known or common, but where just barely over a year out so the only real answer there is "no one knows for sure yet".

However: "Several viruses including SARS-CoV-1, HIV, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), polio, the chicken pox virus, etc. have been known to trigger delayed neurological sequelae." So symptoms that first appear quite some time later is at least in the realm of possibility.

So it possibly COULD be a related to covid - though I wouldn't necessarily get my heart set on that being the one and only possible explanation. (If you get stuck on one explanation and it is wrong then it can prevent you from moving on to explore other explanations that may lead to better treatments.)
posted by flug at 6:42 PM on March 23, 2021

First I want to just sympathize with you, that's been a noticeable part of what's been so hard about having had COVID is sitting there for every little thing wondering "is this COVID related or not?" This is a super new and super weird disease, and I think that people who haven't had it might not get as to how hard the not knowing ANYTHING about it is.

So, as a long hauler, I think it could be related, it certainly sounds like symptoms I've been experiencing off and on. I'd look at other things first though, especially since you've been pretty symptom free up to this point. Also, I hate to say this, but depending on the Dr. and your insurance situation you might have better luck getting it treated if it's not COVID related.

That said, something to consider before your appointment is the news about Long Haulers is totally centered on the more extreme cases, but there are a ton of people with mild\moderate symptoms, so don't discount the possibility just because you were able to function normally. It took me way longer than it should have to go to the Dr. because I was mostly functioning. It's also REALLY hard to tease out some of the symptoms from the physical and mental responses to living through a global pandemic. There are a lot of lesser known symptoms that you might not notice, or think to link to COVID that are also associated with Long Haul Covid. As to the timing, Covid's weird. I'm still occasionally get brand new symptoms 10-12 months out. As a good example of both, my hair started falling out noticeably more than before starting about month 11.

Anyway, if you've got any questions, or just need some support, feel free to me-mail me. I'm only an expert in my own experience, but I can probably point you to some resources.
posted by Gygesringtone at 8:40 AM on March 24, 2021

Some years ago I got some infection, nothing too serious at first but I started developping horrendous joint pains. I could not sleep and I could not type at my computer (and I work in an office). After a week of this a friend recommended I went for a thai massage. Over the next few hours I could feel the pain gradually going away. At the time it felt like a miracle cure. Now I think the problem was going to solve itself anyway, sooner or later. Still I think it is worth a try. It has to be a proper thai massage though.
I also believe that magnesium supplements have helped me tremendously in stressful times.
posted by bluedora at 12:17 PM on March 24, 2021

Here's an article from today's Guardian on women and long haul covid.

I hope you recover fully. I'm two decades+ older than you and these are not normal signs of aging.
posted by mareli at 12:07 PM on March 25, 2021 [2 favorites]