OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – The medical community continues to discover more about the conditions COVID “long-haulers” face after their recovery, but doctors say there is still much to learn.
“We’ve only had, I can’t believe it, 2 years with a new virus that we are trying to learn about,” said OSMA President Dr. Mary Clarke. “We keep coming up with different symptoms and different late symptoms, long term symptoms, which is so unusual for a .”
Clarke says with each new answer comes more questions.
“We truly have no idea about why some symptoms happen, why they are linked to other symptoms,” she said.
One of those mysterious symptoms is the post-COVID migraine.
“We have started to notice and recognize that people do get these headaches [or] migraines,” she said. “It’s the more severe cases that you have which we’re starting to see more [of]…we do know that there are a lot of people and probably more than we have identified.”
In some of the more serious cases, the headaches can be so strong that they cause severe nausea, vomiting and sensitivity to light and sound.
“Those people typically are nauseous, vomiting, which if you ever vomit with a migraine, it makes the migraine worse,” she said. “It truly feels like your head’s gonna explode.”
Dr. Clarke says COVID can also lead to brain fog and other neurological conditions.
“We’ve see a lot of depression and anxiety, insomnia, so many many different neurologic conditions that are continuing to be seen,” she said. “We see a lot of fuzzy thinking, hard to say confusion, but we’ll see a harder ability to remember things.”
She says doctors will continue to learn more, but those who are experiencing complications might not be able to know a lot about their condition or a timeline for recovery for a while.
“We are trying to keep as ahead of it as much as possible,” she said. “But [some are] feeling some of the things that we would really love to have more information about, we just don’t.”