De Pere City Hall (File Photo)
DE PERE, WI (WTAQ) — The Mayor of De Pere is speaking about about his experience with COVID-19, and the effects that still stick with him two months after recovering.
Mayor James Boyd tested positive back in September after suffering from a slight cough and a runny nose. That quickly devolved into a loss of taste and smell and a less common COVID-19 symptom: nausea.
“I didn’t eat or really drink much of anything for 13, 14, 15 days,” Boyd said Wednesday. “Everything was repulsive, and that didn’t help, because I knew I had to eat something, but just couldn’t do it.”
A little over two months ago, Boyd tested negative for COVID-19 and was released from isolation. Doctors consider him recovered, but he isn’t so sure.
“I have not had [the same] quality of life since it started,” Boyd said. “Hopefully that turns around pretty soon, but there are a lot of people like me…we are not well. We are not recovered.”
Boyd is part of an increasingly visible group some are informally calling ‘COVID long-haulers’; people who experience lingering symptoms of COVID-19 long after their bout with the virus.
“Some people with severe lung infection from COVID can come back later with scarring in their lungs,” said Dr. David Palubiak of Prevea Health. “They can have ongoing breathing problems despite being ‘cured’ of COVID.”
Dr. Palubiak spoke during a Wednesday Brown County Health Briefing on the typical day in the life of COVID-19 patients.
“We’ve seen somebody who developed a rare problem where, when they stand up, they become very dizzy, their blood pressure drops, and they pass out,” Palubiak said. “They had none of these problems prior to COVID.”
‘Long-Haulers’ also report symptoms such as a persistent ‘brain fog’ and fatigue.
Mayor Boyd, who was never hospitalized, says that even two months later, his sense of smell hasn’t returned, and his sense of taste has only recently begun to reemerge.
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