A year on: Manitoba COVID-19 survivors reflect on their prolonged recoveries and what comes next

As Manitoba marks one year into the pandemic, those whose prolonged COVID-19 recoveries drag on are reflecting on how their lives have changed and what lies ahead.

Manitoba's first confirmed cases were announced March 12, right around when a Winnipeg couple's year-long COVID journey began and months before a health-care aide fell ill.

Married couple Genevieve and Neil Funk-Unrau tested positive in mid-March 2020, while Leslie Paget got sick last fall. All continue to deal with the effects.

The Funk-Unraus tested positive after returning from a trip to Cuba. Neil's experience was more dire; he ended up in a coma and suffered several strokes in hospital.

Today he's feeling "basically OK" but the impacts linger on.

"I probably don't have quite the same level of energy and the same strength as before, but otherwise things are returning to a new normal," Neil said.

After they returned home, Genevieve developed a nasty cough and back pain. She soon tested positive. Just as her symptoms seemed to be improving, Neil ran a fever.

He was advised to go to hospital to get tested. Staff ran other tests and found Neil's oxygen levels were low, so he was admitted to hospital on the spot.

'Things went downhill very fast'

Within days, Neil was on a ventilator in hospital. The couple were separated with little warning.

"Things went downhill very fast," Neil told Information Radio host Marcy Markusa.

"That was really scary," said Genevieve, who successfully advocated to see her husband as he fell into a coma.

Neil's recollection of that period is hazy. He says he remembers drifting in and out, hearing snippets of sounds he later learned was Genevieve playing music at his bedside. Most of the time he wasn't sure what was real and what wasn't.

Then, he woke up.

"Waking up more fully in the hospital bed and just realizing by watching the TV beside the bed how much the world had changed just in the time that I was gone … it took a while to adjust to."

His strength and sense of balance are coming back, but the most obvious ongoing challenge has to do with his speech.

Neil speaks in slower, more measured pacing than before. He has to focus on pronouncing words clearly or his voice becomes "slurry," he says.

Hard to say whether that's more from the stroke, COVID-19 or both, he says.

'I've never been so tired'

Genevieve's recovery was marked by struggles with fatigue.

"I've never been so tired," she said. When she does tire now, she says, she sometimes also gets a sore throat or chest at the same time.

What's most affected her is the loss of taste, a symptom commonly associated with COVID-19.

"It's starting to come back but … there are some things that aren't quite right," she said. "I've hardly had a good cup of coffee since then."

She would like to know more about why COVID-19 has had the effects it does. So would Neil; doctors are still trying to determine what about the virus might have produced his strokes.

As they wait on those answers, both are reflecting on how grateful they are for each other.

"I don't know if cautious optimism is the right word," Neil said, "but sort of trying to come [up] with terms of the new normal and recognizing ways that this new normal can be a good life, even if it wasn't quite the same life we had before."

'I had severe difficulties'

As the Funk-Unraus reflect, Leslie Paget's contact with COVID feels fresher.

Four months after she got sick, Paget is still experiencing symptoms daily. She's what's commonly known as a COVID long-hauler.

The health-care aide tested positive on Nov. 1 while working full time on a floor of a facility with an outbreak.

The symptoms came on quickly and kept coming.

"I was so sick, I had everything. I probably should've went to the hospital … I had severe difficulties."

Those difficulties included days of absolute exhaustion, and shooting pains in her head unlike any headache she's experienced. Even today a wave of those aches occasionally washes over her.

Senses of taste, smell not fully returned

Her senses of smell and taste disappeared and haven't fully returned.

Her short-term memory is finicky at times. Paget loses her place in the middle of looking things up on the internet or enters a room for a purpose that immediately vanishes.

This happens to all of us once in a while, but "it's 10 times worse" now Paget says.

"It doesn't come back to me," she said. "It's frustrating."

Medical professionals are still trying to understand how the disease has produced the high blood pressure and rapid heart rate she's grappling with — conditions that weren't there pre-COVID.

On the mend

Her recovery is continuing, and it's not all bad: Her strength is building.

And after months off work, she recently started back part-time.

Paget recently went for a long walk for the first time. She says she crashed when she got home and was tired the whole next day, but it's a step in the right direction.

She turned 55 on Saturday, but she has another important date marked down on her calendar: March 26. That's when she's getting vaccinated.

"When all the pain and exhaustion of the moment has diminished, inspiration, selfless giving and love will be remembered, and the memory of so many innocent lives will be cherished."

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