Wellness

[BARBIE100]

Good old inexpensive Aspirin!

[Kachina624]

@SilleeMee   Be patient with yourself.  It can take months to get over the simple flu so it stands to reason CoVi19 recovery could take a lot longer.  I bet your altitude doesn't help your breathing problem.  Let yourself rest a lot so your body can heal.  Don't worry about getting things confused here.  There's a lot of that going on.

Do you have any idea how you got the virus?  You were being so careful.

Expecting snow this week-end?  Hope you don't have to try to shovel.  On our local news, they said Trinidad was 50° cooler Friday than it was Thursday.  That's quite a difference.  I believe it was 26° at noon.  I suppose you were similar.

[SilleeMee]

@Kachina624 

It was back in April, I think it was, when I started feeling sick. At that time there wasn't any kind of organized social distancing tactics or mask requirements at grocery stores here. I was wearing a mask at about that time whenever I went out shopping but no one else was and it was a rare site to see a person wearing one at the time. I believe I was infected inside a Walmart store. This particular WM has since been closed down twice already for covid outbreaks. It's the busiest WM in the city so that stands to reason. That's the only place I ever went during the beginning of the pandemic so it has to be it.

Yes! there is snow in our forecast here...finally! Hope it helps with the fires up north. they need so desperately.

[pitdakota]

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@SilleeMee wrote:

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@Kachina624 wrote:

@SilleeMee    Are you feeling okay now?  I'm glad to hear people who've had this horrid disease talk about it.  Maybe if more people did, the naysayers would out on their masks and take it seriously.

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@Kachina624 

Thanks for asking. I'm feeling okay about half the time. I feel exhausted and it's still hard to breathe. My memory is foggy and I can't remember simple things...not normal for me. I'm still on an inhaler to help me breathe. My rheumy wants me off of it b/c it's a steroid and she doesn't want me on it. I get my blood tested to check my kidney function and though my results haven't been normal, I don't need dialysis like I did in the hospital...TG. I have to go and get scans of both my lungs and kidneys in a couple of months. Not looking forward to that. 

Sometimes I hesitate to post stuff on this forum b/c I can't remember things I've written or things I've read. I get confused about where I have read stuff either here or somewhere else...that's an awful feeling and it's never happened to me before. I hope that part of my recovery quickly passes and things get back to normal. If that is even possible no one knows.

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@SilleeMeefrom the bottom of my heart I just ache for you.  I seriously mean that.  Having spent more years than I will admit working as a nurse in critical care before I moved into teaching, I am altogether too familiar with & understand the struggle of patients that are seriously ill.  One of the reasons I beat the bandwagon here so much I guess.  If it helps save just one person a bad experience, it is worth any backlash.

But congrats on beating this horrible virus and making it out of ICU, the hospital, and getting back home!!!  

I will say what you posted here tends to be very common for many post infection.  I know from your posting over time that you are very knowledgeable and have no doubt you are doing what you are supposed to do at this point.  

If it helps any, I have a former student that working as a nurse contracted covid and also had a difficult time with recovery.  She really struggled with what she called "foggy brain".  It was so problematic that she returned to work for only one day and didn't go back.  She just didn't feel safe working as a nurse.  She is just now saying she thinks it is getting better.  So I hold out hope that there will be improvement for you as well.  

We still have much to learn about the long term ramifications of this virus, but I am hopeful that your renal and pulmonary function will improve also.  Encouraging to know you do not need dialysis post discharge.

Why anyone would take a risk of passing this infection on to someone else that may end up really struggling and going through a grueling critical care experience to then struggle with lingering after effects is just well beyond my comprehension.  The guidelines and cautions are there for a reason.  

Hang in there and know that are many here that care about you!   In the meantime, you just keep on posting.  Doesn't matter if you posted something before or not, etc.  We are just glad you are posting!!!!  

[FlyersGirl]

@SilleeMee Just want you to know that I am keeping you in my prayers and am hoping that you will fully recover soon. Stay strong. 

[SilleeMee]

You guys are so kind!  @pitdakota  @FlyersGirl @Kachina624 

Thank you so much for your encouraging words. They really mean a lot to me.

[Still Raining]

@SilleeMee 

It is hard to hear that recovery is slow.  Your posts are still lovely and welcome.

Be gentle with your progress and take care.

[Mindy D]

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@SeaMaiden wrote:

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@Mindy D wrote:

A new study involving HOSPITALIZED Covid-19 patients and aspirin was just released. Please don't take this to mean that you should rush out and start taking aspirin. The most important finding was that those that took aspirin had a 47% reduced risk of dying in the hospital compared to those patients not taking aspirin. Here's a summary.

Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine looked at the medical records of 412 patients hospitalized for complications from COVID-19. The average age of patients was 55. The patients in the study were treated at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore or at three other hospitals. Patient's preexisting conditions, such as hypertension, diabetes, kidney disease, and others, as well as age, gender, BMI and race, were all controlled for in the study. About 1/4 of the patients has been taking daily low dose aspirin before their admission and the rest began taking the aspirin after admission. 

The authors concluded that those taking aspirin had a 44% reduced chance of ventilation and a 43% less risk of ICU admission. Those that took the aspirin had a 47% reduced risk of dying in the hospital compared to patients not taking the aspirin. The patients taking the aspirin also did not have a significant risk of adverse effects including bleeding. Jonathan Chow, the study's lead researcher, said  the study needs to be confirmed through a randomized clinical trial. The study was published October 21 in the journal Anesthesia and Analgesia.

Edited to add the citation and method for viewing the article

Sorry, I'm late with a citation.

1. Jonathan H. Chow, Ashish K. Khanna, Shravan Kethireddy, David Yamane, Andrea Levine, Amanda M. Jackson, Michael T. McCurdy, Ali Tabatabai, Gagan Kumar, Paul Park, Ivy Benjenk, Jay Menaker, Nayab Ahmed, Evan Glidewell, Elizabeth Presutto, Shannon Cain, Naeha Haridasa, Wesley Field, Jacob G. Fowler, Duy Trinh, Kathleen N. Johnson, Aman Kaur, Amanda Lee, Kyle Sebastian, Allison Ulrich, Salvador Peña, Ross Carpenter, Shruti Sudhakar, Pushpinder Uppal, Benjamin T. Fedeles, Aaron Sachs, Layth Dahbour, William Teeter, Kenichi Tanaka, Samuel M. Galvagno, Daniel L. Herr, Thomas M. Scalea, Michael A. Mazzeffi. Aspirin Use is Associated with Decreased Mechanical Ventilation, ICU Admission, and In-Hospital Mortality in Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19. Anesthesia & Analgesia, 2020; Publish Ahead of Print DOI: 10.1213/ANE.0000000000005292

To view free full article press on the purple. You will then be able to see the free abstract. At the bottom of the abstract you will see Volume publish ahead of print. Press these words. You will then see 

Aspirin Use is Associated with Decreasedd Mechanical Ventilation, ICU Admission, and In-Hospital Mortality in Hospitalized Patients with COID-19

Chow, Jonathan H.; Khanna, Ashish K.; Kethireddy, Shravan; More

October 21, 2020

Just under this you will see a tiny PDF icon. If you press that you will be able to see the comple article in preprint for free. 

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 Previously I was doing the baby aspirin  a day thing for probably 10 years or more.  

I recently quit taking my 81 mg baby aspirin because new  studies showed that it could cause bleeding intestinal and brain bleeds. I was not taking it for heart issues or because a Doctor prescribed it....just on my own.  

I will NOT start taking it  again because it MIGHT HELP IF you are in ICU on a ventilator due to Covid 19.  This is just a hunch anyways.

Anything antiflamatory will do the same thing when you are that sick. 

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@SeaMaiden The study is not about taking low dose aspirin as you did before. You were taking daily low dose aspirin. There were known benefits and known side effects of doing this. In recent years this practice has gone out of favor for most people.  This is because the risk associated with that regimen (especially gastrointestinal bleeding) outweighed the benefits for most persons. Today, yaking it that way is for a doctor and patient to decide and is usually reserved for patients with a history of previous heart attack..

The study only deals with the use of low dose aspirin for HOSPITALIZED patients and then for ONLY FOR SHORT TERM USE of a few days, 6 days was the median. This is a very different use of aspirin than the use you previously took it for. Another, much larger study is needed and will probably be underway to confirm the helpfulness of low dose aspirin as seen in this study's results. A 47% increase in survival of hospitalized COVID patients compared to hospitalized Covid Patients not taking aspirin is nothing to sneeze at. Right now, this study has only a very small sample size and its findings are too limited to lead to widespread medical practice. One thing to note is that the patients on the aspirin in this small study did not have *significant adverse effects from taking it including incidence of stomach bleeding.

*significant means statistically significant. It does not mean that there were zero incidents of adverse effects. I would have to go in and reread the study to see exactly how many patients experienced adverse effects. So I went in and checked. Here are the figures for adverse effects:

Quoted from the study preprint:

"6.1% aspirin [6/98] vs. 7.6% non-aspirin [24/314], p=0.61), or overt thrombosis (8.2% [8/98] aspirin vs. 8.9% [28/314] non-aspirin, p=0.82) between groups."

6.1% of the patients taking aspirin had adverse effects. 7.6% of the patients not taking aspirin had adverse effects.

[Mindy D]

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@hckynut wrote:

@Mindy D ,

Don't be concerned about me rushing to take aspirin. My safe dose, per my Cardiologist, is 81mg per day. Other than that I cannot take any type of anti inflammatory because of my propensity to my colon bleeding. With over 130+ blood transfusions and around 35 iron infusions!

Other than my 81mg per day and steering clear of things high in Vitamin E, Tylenol type meds are about it for me.

Interesting!

hckynut 

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81mg per day is the exact amount that the patients in the study took. 

[Mindy D]

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@Sooner wrote:

Just a thought but perhaps only those patients with milder cases were given aspirin to begin with.

I'd think they would be treating more severe cases with things other than aspirin. . . maybe skew the statistics. 

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@Sooner @Patients were treated with other therapeutics. The authors explain this. The study is controlled for this. At least from the standpoint of this study, low dose aspirin was linked to fewer deaths in the group of hospitalized patients as compared with a control group of hospitalized patients not receiving the low dose aspirin.