One Woman's Hopeful Story of How She Overcame Long Covid
Seattle resident Sarah Rainwater and family.
Even through I’ve never had Covid, I feel a strange kinship with people facing mysterious and persistent symptoms in its aftermath. I fought another virus for 13 years and finally won by giving up the fight and finding deeper healing.
I understand the terror of a sudden disability with an uncertain cause, and a rotating blur of doctor’s who offer their best guess but no definitive cure. I know the exasperation of the medical maze and a dizzying array of symptoms that leave you unable to work or do what you love.
Today, I offer two stories of hope and recovery: my own and an interview with a woman who overcame post-Covid symptoms through the same mind-body approach. As you read the blog and watch our video interview, know this healing could happen for you too.
Watch my interview with Sarah Rainwater on how she recovered from post-Covid symptoms.
ACUTE BECOMES CHRONIC AND MYSTERIOUS
Sarah Rainwater caught Covid-19 in early November 2020. She was alarmed about her own health and fretted that she’d spread it to her in-laws and children. The 37-year-old drove to the hospital in the middle of the night with a cough and fever. Doctors confirmed she had an acute infection. Fortunately, her lungs looked healthy on x-rays.
Within a couple weeks, Sarah’s taste, smell and vitality returned. But she still felt like she was in flight or fight mode. She was taking care of her two young children, navigating life as a remote schoolteacher and preparing for the holidays, amidst a world in crisis. A family member suggested she might be vulnerable to long-haul Covid, which further ramped up her worries.
By late December, the 37-year-old developed dizziness, chest pains, persistent coughs, brain fog, insomnia, fatigue, sweating, anxiety and other post-Covid symptoms. She went back to the hospital and all tests were clear.
This is a familiar story. New studies show about one in four Covid-19 patients still have symptoms, or develop new ones, weeks or months after an initial infection—even those who had mild or asymptomatic cases. It’s a looming health crisis with myriad medical theories and no consensus.
HOPE AND HEALING FOR LONG-HAULERS
Fortunately, Sarah knew what to do. She’d already healed from migraines, plantar fasciitis, as well as pelvic, neck and back pain through the work of the late Dr. John Sarno, who wrote four books on mind-body medicine during his 50 years of practice at New York University Medical School. In The Mind-Body Prescription, Sarno describes Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and other post-viral syndromes like Epstein-Barr as being caused and cured by the brain.
Sarah decided to doggedly apply mind-body techniques to her long-Covid symptoms. She stopped reading fearful accounts in social media. Instead, she immersed herself in recovery stories and neuroscience.
Sarah kept reminding her brain that she was safe, while slowly returning to activities she wanted and needed to do. She felt her emotions with somatic meditations and expressive writing. After a month, she bounced back.
The keys? A total belief that her body was not being harmed by the virus and that she would recover.
To be sure, rigorous medical evaluation and scientific research is needed for people with long Covid. But we also must look to the intractable mind-body connection as a potential cause for long-haulers who have no physical damage.
REAL SYMPTOMS CAUSED BY THE BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM
I’m honored to be participating in a mind-body pilot study for long-haul syndrome through Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, to see how these techniques might help people with psychophysiologic symptoms.
The study uses a novel, 12-week program with mind-body education, stress reduction, emotional expression, desensitization of triggers, mindfulness meditation and other practices. It’s heartening to see participants become active agents in their own wellbeing. Principal investigator and emergency medicine physician Michael Donnino says that while Sarno wrote books that are beloved by the public, medical research wasn’t his focus. Donnino hopes to bridge that gap.
As another Harvard Medical School professor Adam Gaffney said on the First Opinion podcast, “We should acknowledge as a society to a greater extent than we currently do that psychological suffering, psychological anguish, can in fact produce very real, harmful, hurtful physical symptoms, whether that’s pain, shortness of breath or other things.”
Gaffney goes onto say that people think of symptoms as real or not real, but he doesn’t view it that way. Neither do I. Symptoms triggered by trauma and stress are just as real as those with physical causes. Afterall, a panic attack can cause chest pain and shortness of breath. Who among us hasn’t gotten a headache in the midst of a stressful deadline or family argument?
Certainly, people with Covid-19 were facing unprecedented stress from a novel, unpredictable, fast-spreading and potentially lethal virus. Many felt the despair and terror of isolation. Others lost jobs and income. Some feared for their life or grieved for loved ones. This can be a perfect storm that floods the nervous system with a deluge of stress hormones.
When stress overwhelms our capacity to process it, pain, fatigue, brain fog and insomnia can become chronic. Anyone who’s experienced medically untreatable symptoms knows they’re real.
But what’s the cause and the cure? These questions are best answered by seeing each person as a feeling, thinking human being, rather than simply numbers on a paper or a body with parts.
MY MIND-BODY BREAKTHROUGH WITH CFS
I learned this over an exasperating 13-year odyssey, which eventually became a source of healing and reclamation. After a getting a series of colds at age 34, my system crashed. I went from TV reporter to dead air overnight.
Physicians told me Epstein-Barr was invading my body and brain. After compiling reams of labs, they pointed to a whole party of viruses, bacteria and parasites. Specialists postulated these bugs were suppressing my immune system, causing inflammation or an auto-immune response. Gulp.
After trying to fight the invaders for over a decade, I realized the scary lab findings were moot. They were not perpetuating my illness and they were certainly not going to cure me.
I’d recovered from the colds that triggered Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but I had never addressed the trauma that preceded it. More emotional stress mounted. I lost a career I loved, the ability to support myself and participate in the living world. Doctor’s hypotheses that I had an incurable disease deflated my hopes and sent me into spirals of symptoms.
What was missing from my medical treatment was humanity. And neuroscience. We are highly affected by stress, trauma, fear and other emotions. Feelings are not irrelevant when it comes to our health. Emotions release neurochemicals that trigger physiological effects: a faster heartbeat, hormone shifts, changes in nerve firing patterns, blood flow and breath.
It’s certainly not “all in our head” but the brain activates physical symptoms in our body. I’d suffered an extremely traumatic event before the onset of CFS/ME. Unbelievably, none of the nearly 50 practitioners I saw asked if I’d experienced emotional stress prior to my crash.
A NEW PARADIGM IN MEDICINE
Finally, I discovered a remedy through the humble and brilliant Dr. Sarno, who had already passed away. Sarno wrote about how the brain represses emotions and initiates physical symptoms in the face of both psychological and physical threats, even after an illness or injury has passed. He coined this phenomenon Tension Myositis Syndrome, TMS for short, and later Mind-Body Syndrome, or MBS.
Another mind-body visionary, internal medicine physician Howard Schubiner, had a seismic impact on my healing. In his book Unlearn Your Pain, Schubiner describes how stressful events trigger emotions that activate our amygdala and autonomic nervous system. This prepares us to escape from danger.
When a perceived threat is heightened or prolonged, we get stuck in a loop of symptoms, as is typically the case with fibromyalgia, back or body pain, headaches, insomnia, brain fog, irritable bowel or bladder, anxiety and other stress-induced ailments.
Practitioners had led me to believe that elevated titers of Epstein-Barr were unbeatable invaders. Dr. Schubiner gently explained that my lab tests showed “harmless antibodies” from a past infection. They were not causing CFS and were no cause for alarm.
When I realized I wasn’t permanently impaired, my nervous system gave a palpable sigh. This knowledge led to a spontaneous remission (which is why Dr. Sarno called it knowledge therapy.) I did deep inner work and my health returned in baby steps and sometimes in leaps.
This is why I’m sharing both my story and Sarah Rainwater’s—to offer new possibilities to people with different diagnosis. Through this inner work, we enter a new healing paradigm based on self-awareness, empowerment and compassion. We find wellbeing in our body, mind and heart.
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Read Sarah Rainwater’s Google Doc on resources to recover from post-Covid symptoms.