Young COVID-19 survivor: “This could be a part of my life for years to come if not forever”

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    MI (WNEM) — April 10 was a jarring day at TV5 when all of us learned that a potentially deadly infection had invaded our lives in a deeply personal way when a member of our team tested positive for COVID-19.

Now, he’s still living with the consequences of the virus.

“I do have to take a walk every single day to exercise my lungs,” Markie Heideman said. “I do a lot of breathing treatments. I have to test my breathing often.”

A bitter pill to swallow for a seemingly healthy 23-year-old.

“It’s been months and I still experience a lot of long-term issues as well.”

Issues that are dividing Heideman’s life into two chapters — before and after COVID.

“Most days there will be a time where I am really, really fatigued and I have to sit down for a little while especially if I am busy or working on something and running errands,” he said. “Usually after I grocery shop, I am exhausted.”

Symptoms he still experiences after falling ill in April.

He had a hard time catching his breath. He went to his doctor and was treated for bronchitis, but he didn’t get better, so he went back for a chest x-ray.

“They looked at them and were like we’ve never seen this before,” Heideman said. “It was kind of panic moment for me, they looked at them a little more and decided to give me a COVID test because they weren’t sure what was going on.”

Little did he know that his results would be positive and the days that followed were his darkest. Quarantined and confined to his small bedroom for weeks.

“I used to go to bed and be really afraid to go to bed because I didn’t know if I was going to wake up halfway through the night and not catch my breath,” he said.

Shortness of breath was just one of Markie’s symptoms. He was constantly fatigued, he had headaches, digestive issues, hot flashes.

He thought things would be better in just a couple of weeks but that wasn’t the case and some of his symptoms still exist today.

“The reality is that now we are finding out, yes there, for weeks or months afterwards that people have debilitating symptoms, particularly the pulmonary symptoms, the lungs,” said Dr. Bobby Mukkumala.

Mukkumala says it’s too soon to tell what damage has been done to Markie’s lungs and he can’t promise what has been done can be reversed.

“When you look at the cat scans of the lungs of people who have had COVID and you see how much scar tissue there is in those lungs, it doesn’t take a medical degree to realize that some of that isn’t going to go back to normal,” he said.

Going back to normal is what Mukkumala fears the most. He worries people, especially young folks, are becoming too complacent and resuming life as we knew it before the pandemic.

“I see things on social media that H1N1 killed 50k people and had millions of cases relative to what we have now and comparing the two, but the reality is that this is much more dangerous and that it’s killed three times as many people in one third of the time,” he said.

“There are so many people who didn’t make it through this or have a lot worse long term effects from this,” Heideman said. “I am really lucky that I have really made it out of this with some lung damage and some fatigue issues.”

And behind Markie’s mask is the face of fear. One that is shared by many other young people he chats with in online support groups. What if he gets it again and will his once healthy lungs be able to handle another round?

“We don’t know yet whether someone is potentially secondarily infected with COVID,” Mukkumala said. “Could they get it again, after their immunity wains. I wouldn’t fall into the trap that I’ve had it, I’m over it, I will never get it again. They need to continuously be careful.”

“It’s definitely really scary to think this could be a part of my life for years to come if not forever,” Heideman said.

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