at the Marseille hospital, patients treated for long Covid want to return to “their lives before”

A unit in public hospitals in Marseille welcomes patients with long-term Covid, whose care is far from easy, even several years after the first symptoms appear.

Four years ago, the first confinement began and marked the arrival of the Covid-19 epidemic in France. Even today, hundreds of thousands of people suffer from the virus on a daily basis, victims of long Covid. A disease that is still difficult to explain with numerous symptoms – extreme fatigue, digestive and cognitive disorders – which make daily life very difficult for patients. A unit of Marseille public hospitals (AP-HM) offers consultations to these patients with long Covid.

On a mat, guided by her physiotherapist, Laurence, 53, stretches as best she can. “We have the body of an elderly person even though we are very young”, deplores the fifty-year-old. Two years ago, she was diagnosed with long Covid. She has since suffered from pain throughout her body. “My body is completely out of whack”, describes Laurence. At the slightest effort, her heart races, she becomes out of breath and trembles. So she lives locked up at home most of the time and has to count her steps to avoid feeling unwell.

“As I tell everyone: I have an electronic bracelet. When I walk too much, then I lose my voice. It’s not possible to go shopping.”

Laurence, 53 years old

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Not to mention the digestive and cognitive problems, Laurence often searches for words and has great difficulty thinking: “I love cooking. When I make a recipe, you put the foods and the quantities in front of me, I’ll mess it up. Someone has to help me. Sometimes I don’t write down what I think .” She can no longer drive or work, having been a self-employed masseuse. She is enraged by this never-ending illness: “I was hyperactive and I was hit hard. Covid-19 stole two years of my life. I have to get my life back. I want my life before.”

Case by case to treat patients

Despite all this suffering, it happened to Laurence that no one believed her, that even a doctor told her that this illness was “in her head”. But long Covid is very real and we can act. “It is not because there are no drug treatments that we cannot take care of patients”, explains Meriem Chine, doctor at the long Covid consultation unit of Public Assistance – Marseille hospitals (AP-HM). A unit which allowed Laurence to be taken care of in particular for rehabilitation.

“We can organize rehabilitation measures to hope for an improvement in the patient’s state of healthdetails Meriem China, and refer patients to physiotherapists, psychologists or speech therapists.”

“We see patients who get better after having been supported, sometimes after 24 or 36 months. And we end up cured, for the vast majority of us.”

Meriem Chine, doctor at the AP-HM long Covid consultation unit

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Faced with this disease, we must adapt responses on a case-by-case basis, insists Dr. China. In his unit, around ten new patients come for consultation every week for long Covid.