Yesterday I posted some statistics based on comparing how discussion of symptoms has progressed over the last month or so across the various threads that we've been contributing to. Here, I've looked at all the posts collectively, from 9th April to 15th May, and below summarise some of the main things I've found. In the absence of any proper study of people who have suffered COVID for longer than a month, I wanted to be able to summarise some of the symptoms we have collectively discussed - so that others or newcomers will be able to compare themselves, and hopefully be reassured that what they're experiencing is not unusual (relatively speaking - it is still weird by any other measure). At the moment, websites like NHS111 provide misleading information about long-term symptoms and this caused me considerable anxiety in the earlier weeks when I became ill.
Yesterday I posted some statistics based on comparing how discussion of symptoms has progressed over the last month or so across the various threads that we've been contributing to. Here, I've looked at all the posts collectively, from 9th April to 15th May, and below summarise some of the main things I've found. In the absence of any proper study of people who have suffered COVID for longer than a month, I wanted to be able to summarise some of the symptoms we have collectively discussed - so that others or newcomers will be able to compare themselves, and hopefully be reassured that what they're experiencing is not unusual (relatively speaking - it is still weird by any other measure). At the moment, websites like NHS111 provide misleading information about long-term symptoms (this caused me considerable anxiety in the earlier weeks when I became ill).
214 different people have posted messages between 9th April-15th May, although 120 have posted 5 messages or fewer. The top 5 posters were moodgie (366 posts), egghead (332), godhelpusall (258), pinkoneblueone (202) and fedupofbed (173). Thanks to all of you (especially you five) for your kindness and responsiveness and for helping to keep a record of the progress of your illness. The word sorry occurred 542 times across the 5000 messages I examined. Most of the time it involved posters telling each other they were sorry to hear about their symptoms. This is a very supportive group.
The most talked about body part overall was the chest (1087 mentions), followed by the heart (585), lung/lungs (490), throat (473), stomach/tummy (225), legs/leg (153), muscle/muscles (124), ribs/rib (111), hand/hands (102), arm/arms (101), eye/eyes 86
Discussion of symptoms involved pain/pains/painful (1145), breathing/breathlessness/breathless/sob (937), cough/coughing (495), fatigue(d)/exhausted (443), (lack of) sleep (394), anxiety/anxious (356), inflammation/inflamed (215), fever (189), headache/headaches (188), palpitations (164), dizzy/dizziness (116), nausea (100), asthma (96), pnenmonia (93), taste (93), reflux (84), heartburn (71), chills (65), smell (64), diarrhoea (63), tightness (60), pleurisy (55), costochondritis (48), buzzing (44) (Of this list 14 have applied to me).
The chest was described as pain/pains/painful/hurts/ache/aches/sore 379 times, tight/tightness 156 times and then stabbing 12, burning 43, intermittment 11 and heavy 16 times.
Pain was described as stabbing 13 times, burning 22 times, terrible 12 times, severe 11, worse 29, mild 12, bad, 28 and better 28.
In terms of medication, antibiotics were mentioned most (207 times - most often in the first week I looked at), followed by ibuprofen 113 (in the last week), paracetamol 70, vitamin (59), inhaler (57), turmeric (23), zinc (5), Epsom salts (5), magnesium (4).