Long COVID diagnosis puts extra strain on family caregivers : Shots

Louise Salant (right), 72, and her aunt Eileen Salant (center), 86, both got very sick with COVID-19 in 2020. And as Eileen developed long COVID symptoms, so too did Louise, who struggled with fatigue and shortness of breath while also managing her aunt’s care. Nearly three years later, home health aides like Elfnesh Legesse (left) help Louise take care of her aunt.

Gabriela Bhaskar for NPR


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Gabriela Bhaskar for NPR


Louise Salant (right), 72, and her aunt Eileen Salant (center), 86, both got very sick with COVID-19 in 2020. And as Eileen developed long COVID symptoms, so too did Louise, who struggled with fatigue and shortness of breath while also managing her aunt’s care. Nearly three years later, home health aides like Elfnesh Legesse (left) help Louise take care of her aunt.

Gabriela Bhaskar for NPR

For Louise Salant, long COVID has meant new stress, new responsibilities, and multiple medical crises to manage. It’s transformed her life.

But there’s a twist. She’s had to deal with this condition not just as a patient but also as a caregiver for her 86-year-old aunt Eileen Salant, who has coped with long COVID’s disabling symptoms for almost three years.

Eileen and Louise both caught an acute bout of COVID-19 in March of 2020. Eileen had been taking care of her brother, who was admitted to a New York City hospital with heart failure during those dark days of the early pandemic. He got COVID there, and died from his infection with the virus. Both aunt and niece also became very ill.

It was early days of the pandemic in New York, and hospitals were so crowded that Louise was told to stay home and fight out the illness on her own. Meanwhile, Eileen was hospitalized and stayed there all spring, including two months on a ventilator. After that, she spent five months at a rehab hospital. She finally came home to her apartment in Riverdale, the Bronx, the day before Thanksgiving in 2020 — but she was very weak.

Eileen and Louise both got COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic in New York. Eileen ended up on a ventilator for two months and then spent five months in a rehab hospital. Louise fought the illness at home as hospitals started filling up.

Gabriela Bhaskar for NPR


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Gabriela Bhaskar for NPR


Eileen and Louise both got COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic in New York. Eileen ended up on a ventilator for two months and then spent five months in a rehab hospital. Louise fought the illness at home as hospitals started filling up.

Gabriela Bhaskar for NPR

“She could barely sit up in bed, couldn’t hold a fork,” says Louise, who lives a 10-minute taxi ride away.

Over the years, Louise, now 72, has worked at various times as an art therapist, taught piano to children and adults and done medical interviewing for a cancer research team. But when COVID hit,

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Younger caregivers ‘exist in the shadows,’ offer vital assist | Health and fitness and Exercise

PLANO, Texas (AP) — Ronan Kotiya leans over his father, fingers wrapped all over a plastic tube he’s about to slide from a tracheostomy gap in dad’s neck.

“3, 2, 1, go,” the 11-year-aged says as he removes the tube. His mom slips a padded neck brace on her spouse and lifts him into a sitting down place on their mattress.

Ronan’s 9-12 months-aged brother, Keaton, waits close by, ready to join their father, Rupesh Kotiya, to a moveable ventilator.

“Ronan, do you want to suction daddy’s mouth and then get all set to go?” Siobhan Pandya asks immediately after her son steers dad’s energy wheelchair into the living room of the family’s Plano, Texas, dwelling.

“Thanks buddy, good position,” a robotic voice crackles from a pill Kotiya works by using to talk.

So begins yet another weekend for the brothers — two Harry Potter admirers with mouths whole of braces, a knack for setting up with Legos and some large caregiving responsibilities.

Their 46-calendar year-aged father has Lou Gehrig’s disorder, a fatal health issues that has taken his capability to speak and stroll. A ventilator helps him breathe. He employs eye-monitoring application on the tablet to say points, blinks to show certainly or moves his mouth facet to facet for no.

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As numerous as 10 million young children in the U.S. could present some sort of care at residence, in accordance to researcher Melinda Kavanaugh. Some kids are the only caregivers people have, though others fill in when going to nurses or other help is not offered.

These young children support most cancers individuals, military services veterans, grandparents with heart ailment or autistic siblings. They’re usually also youthful to generate, and their perform commonly goes unnoticed outside the house the household.

“They exist in the shadows,” said Kavanaugh, an associate professor of social operate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Kavanaugh and other scientists say the selection of young caregivers is expanding, and they will need help. Caregiving is a job that little ones like Ronan and Keaton just take critically and something that their mom hopes will form them into empathetic, sturdy younger gentlemen.

But finding there to start with will involve a everyday struggle to stability staying a kid with residing in a quite grown-up planet.

Ronan grabs a handful of toy automobiles and kneels on a clinic flooring at Texas Neurology in Dallas.

His opponent, a freckle-faced boy named Charlie, waits a few ft absent, ready to smash automobiles together. First to tip around loses.

“Y’all are savages,” states Evie, a skinny 9-12 months-old prone to spontaneous dance.

The kids have gathered in the clinic on a sunny Saturday afternoon to understand more about caring for people today with Lou Gehrig’s disorder, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. These 7 youngsters — ages 8 to 12 — help treatment for a mother or father or grandparent with ALS, an disease that destroys nerve cells in the

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Filipino American caregivers reflect on COVID trauma and healing : Shots

Left to right: Filipino American health care workers Karen Cantor, Karen Shoker, and John Paul Atienza were among many who cared for COVID patients in the early days of the pandemic.

Rosem Morton


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Rosem Morton


Left to right: Filipino American health care workers Karen Cantor, Karen Shoker, and John Paul Atienza were among many who cared for COVID patients in the early days of the pandemic.

Rosem Morton

In the spring of 2020 Glenn Magpili, 42, got sick with COVID. The first wave of the pandemic had flooded New York area hospitals and Magpili, an emergency room nurse in Manhattan, fell ill in the same hospital where he’d been caring for patients sick with the coronavirus. Then, he was intubated.

“When I woke up, I thought I was just asleep for a couple of days,” he recalls. “They told me it was almost four weeks.”

Magpili recovered but counts himself “one of the lucky ones. There were so many Filipino nurses who got sick,” he says.

I work as a nurse, too — I was born in Manila and immigrated to the U.S. with my family when my mom was recruited to teach here. I was 16. My interest in caring and service led me to nursing; my interest in storytelling led me to photography.

For Filipino Americans like Magpili and me working in all aspects of health care, being so close to a new and devastating virus in the early days of the pandemic has taken a disproportionate toll.

Filipinos and Filipino Americans make up just 4% of registered nurses in the U.S., but account for nearly a third of all COVID-related deaths among registered nurses, according to one study.

The history of Filipino nurses working in the U.S. goes back many decades as Americans established U.S.-style nursing schools in the Philippines during the U.S. occupation and colonization of the early 1900s. When the U.S. has faced nursing shortages after World War II and more recently, Filipinos have answered the call.

And it’s not just nurses. Doctors, respiratory and physical therapists and other health workers from the Philippines have come to the U.S. for medical training and jobs. When the pandemic happened, I knew my Filipino community would be heavily affected. Many of us ended up on the front lines caring for critical COVID-19 patients while watching colleagues and family members fall sick.

I want Filipinos to be seen beyond the statistics. I want people to see their faces, hear their diverse stories and learn about their sacrifices. It is important. These are people who have always contributed to the health and wellness of this country.

Here are some of their stories from the first devastating surge in New York City — and how they made it through. We’ve edited the conversations for length and clarity.

Bea Leal
Bea Leal

Dr. Bea Leal, 33, internal medicine physician

I grew up in the Philippines in a family of doctors. My mom, my mom’s sisters, my cousins and my

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Intermountain Healthcare will require its caregivers to be vaccinated against COVID-19

Intermountain Healthcare has announced it will require “all of its caregivers” to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to comply with pending federal rules.

Federal officials are moving forward on vaccine requirements for large employers — and previously have said government insurers like Medicare and Medicaid will only cover services from health care providers whose employees all are vaccinated.

That would eliminate coverage for about four in every 10 of Intermountain’s patients, if the network did not require vaccines, said Dr. Mark Briesacher, chief physician executive for Intermountain.

“After reviewing the rules that we have received, it really became clear that we need to comply with these rules because this is about caring for people,” Briesacher said in a news conference Wednesday. “We care for people who have Medicare insurance, Medicaid insurance, other forms of federal health insurance. We have connections to a variety of federal contracts.”

About 80% of Intermountain’s care providers already are fully vaccinated, according to a news statement Wednesday.

That means about one in five are not.

Those employees may seek exemptions on medical or religious grounds, Briesacher said — a process that’s already in place for an array of other vaccinations that Intermountain requires employees to have, like those for the flu, whooping cough, measles, and other illnesses.

“We’re going to work through those very thoughtfully, very carefully, in a generous way … to honor those exemptions,” Briesacher said.

Employees have until Jan. 5 to get their first shot of a vaccine. Those who haven’t at that point will be put on “administrative leave,” Briesacher said.

“We will … continue that thoughtful conversation to understand what their needs are, what their questions are and get those answered,” Briesacher said.

If employees remain unvaccinated and do not have an exemption as of Feb. 9 “we’ll then begin to move to separate them from the organization,” Briesacher said. “We’ll do that in a very caring and thoughtful and supportive way, helping them land in a place that’s right for them and best for them.

Briesacher said he doesn’t “have a specific number in mind” of how many employees may quit or wait to be fired rather than get the vaccine.

“We’ve seen varying experiences across the United States when different health systems have gone through this,” Briesacher said.

While some hospitals have struggled to retain staff after imposing vaccine requirements, surveys of health care workers have generally overstated their actual willingness to quit. That’s according to research in The Conversation, a nonprofit news publication that conducts and covers academic research. In a sample of health care employers that had implemented vaccine requirements, researchers found a vanishingly small percentage of employees actually left their jobs.

It’s not clear where else Intermountain employees would seek employment; the state’s second-largest healthcare system, University of Utah Health, already has required employees to be vaccinated. And all other healthcare providers in the United States fall under under the same federal rules that have prompted Intermountain to require

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