The long arm of COVID

Mel Hammond, Isthmus

Fatigue, brain fog and other symptoms continue to plague more than 5% of Wisconsin residents

“It was like somebody flipped a switch,” Tim Gittings says, describing the onset of his long COVID symptoms. “I got nauseous and dizzy and disoriented. It felt like my batteries wouldn’t hold a charge.”

As a core company member at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Gittings was accustomed to working long days and nights, rehearsing multiple shows at the same time, and leaping across the stage with a sword. But when these new symptoms appeared in June 2022 — more than two years after his first suspected COVID infection — his body could no longer keep up with the demands of the job.

“I would be in rehearsals and get a wave of [symptoms] and have to lie on the floor for a couple hours,” Gittings says. At one point, an EMT on staff thought he was having a heart attack.

Gittings had to drop out of shows and take less physically demanding roles, which APT was supportive of. But he says it was frustrating to work at a lower capacity than he was used to, especially when that meant putting pressure on other members of the company.

Physical therapist Autumn Bonner also struggled to keep up with her job responsibilities when her long COVID symptoms appeared. She experienced a mild case of COVID in July 2022, but when she returned to her private physical therapy clinic after a 10-day quarantine, she didn’t feel recovered. “I would work with a patient and then find myself more tired than normal. I was coming home at night, and the not-feeling-well would linger well through into the next day. I’d be exhausted and have headaches. That was the beginning of the long COVID.”

Gittings and Bonner are two of an estimated 247,000 Wisconsin adults currently experiencing long COVID, according to the latest available figures from the CDC — about 5% of the population. Of those people, about 73% experience activity limitations because of the disease. The most common symptoms include fatigue, brain fog, and post-exertional malaise, which refers to symptoms that get worse after even light activity. But experts have identified more than 200 symptoms.

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