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Like other older adults who have become cruelly ill from coronavirus, Walters, 65, describes what she calls "Brain Fog" - Difficulty to put thoughts together, concentration problems, inability to remember this which happened pretty much before.

This sudden cognitive dysfunction is a common concern for seniors who have survived a serious VISC-19 fight.

"Many older patients have difficulty organizing and planning what they need to do to spend the day," said Dr. Zijian Chen, medical director of thePost-Covid Care Center To the health system of Mount Sinai in New York. "They report that they become more and more forgetful."Read on and ensure your health and health of others, do not miss these Without signs that you have already had coronavirus.

Overcoming muscle and nervous damage

Other challenges abound: overcome muscle and nervous damage, improve breathing, adapt to new deficiencies, find strength and endurance, and face the emotional toll of unexpected disease.

Most seniors survive in Covid-19 and meet these concerns with varying degrees. Even among the age group at the greatest risk - people aged 85 and over - only 28% of people with confirmed cases eventually die, according toData from disease control and prevention centers. (Due to the gaps in the tests, the actual mortality rate may be lower.)

Walters, who lives in Indianapolis, spent nearly three weeks in March and April heavily sedé, on a fan, fighting for his life in intensive care. Today, she says, "I'm always easy real and I can not breathe too much. If I sometimes walk, my legs become flickering and my arms look like the jelly."

"Emotionally, it was difficult because I've always been able to do for myself and I can not do that as I love it. I was really nervous and manages," Walters said.

The youngest adults who survived a serious course of COVID-19 experience similar problems, but older adults tend to have more serious symptoms and more limitations in terms of what they can do, "said Chen.

"The recovery will be of the order of the months and years, not days or weeks," said Dr. E. Wesley Ely, co-director of serious illness, brain malfunction and survival center of the medical center of Vanderbilt. Most likely, he has speculated, one year after the fight against the disease at least half of the elderly patients seriously ill will not have completely recovered.

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"Law & Order" by purgatory

References of delirium - a change of acute and sudden consciousness and mental acuity - can complicate the recovery of COVID-19. Hospitalized seniors for a serious illness are sensitive to the often unrecognized condition when they have been immobilized for a long time, isolated from family and friends, and given to sedatives to facilitate agitation or narcotics for pain, among others contributory factors.

In older adults, delirium is associated with an increased risk of loss of independence, developing dementia and death. It can be manifested as confusion and acute agitation, or as undetermined non-responsibility and lethargy.

"What we see with COVID-19 and older adults are 70% to 80% delirium rates," said Dr. Babar Khan, Associate Director of the University of Indiana for aging Research at the Regenstrief Institute and one of the Walters doctors.

Gordon Quinn, 77, a Documentary filmmaker in Chicago, believes he contracted Covid-19 at a conference in Australia in early March. At Memorial Hospital Northwestern, it was turned on a fan twice at the ICU, for a total of two weeks and remembers "a lot of hallucinations" - a symptom of delirium.

"I remember really believing that I was in purgatory. I was paralyzed - I could not move. I could hear tear of television - Reruns deLaw & Order: Special Victims Unit - And I wondered, "Is it my life for eternity?" "Said Quinn.

Given the extent of delirium andEditing evidence of neurological damage COVID-19, Khan stated that he plans to see "an increased prevalence of cognitive impairment acquired from the ICU to COVID elderly patients."

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Work on recovery

Ely agrees. "These patients should urgently urge to work at the recovery," he said. Family members should insist on securing rehabilitation services - physical therapy, occupational therapy, orthophonotherapy, cognitive rehabilitation - after the patient leaves the hospital and returns home, he advised.

"Even at my age, people can benefit from an incredible advantage of rehabilitation," said Quinn, who spent nearly two weeks in Chicago, Shirley Ryan Cobiliab, rehabilitation hospital, before returning home and at home. Having got several weeks of home therapy. Today, it is able to walk nearly 2 miles and returned to work, feeling almost normal.

James Talabanis, 72 years old, from Head Park Indian, Illinois, also benefited from the Rehabilitation in Shirley Ryan Cabinet after spending nearly four months in various hospitals beginning in early May.

Talamanis had a complicated case of Covid-19: his kidneys failed and he was put on dialysis. He had a cardiac arrest and was in a coma for nearly 58 days during a fan. It had intestinal bleeding, requiring multiple blood transfusions and has been found that crystallization and fibrosis in its lungs.

When Talagraganis started her detox on August 22, he said, "All my body, my muscles were atrophied. I could not go out of bed or go to the bathroom. I feed on a tube. I could not eat through a tube. I could not eat solid foods. "

In early October, after having hours of therapy every day, Talabanis was able to walk 660 feet in six minutes and eating what he wanted. "My recovery - it's a miracle. Every day, I feel better," he said.

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The need for human connection

Unfortunately, rehabilitation needs for most older adults are often overlooked. NotablyA recent study found that one third of older adults of criticism that survive a stay in UIC did not receive home rehabilitation services after the hospital discharge.

"Elders who live in more rural areas or in larger cities in which major hospital systems provide state-of-the-art services are an important risk of losing this potentially repaired care," said Dr. Sean Smith, Professor Associate of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the University of Michigan.

Sometimes, what is most necessary for the recovery of serious illness is the human connection. It was true for Tom and Virginia Stevens de Nashville, Tennessee, in the late 1980s, who were both hospitalized with Covid-19 in early August.

Ely, one of their doctors, found them in separate, frightened and miserable hospital rooms. "I'm worried about my husband," he said that Virginia told him. "Where am I? What's going on? Where is my wife?" The doctor said Tom asked, before screaming, "I have to go out of here."

Ely and another doctor taking care of the couple agreed. Being isolated from each other was dangerous for this couple, married for 66 years. They had to be put in a room together.

When the doctor entered his new room the next day he said, "It was a night and day difference." The couple sipped coffee, ate and laughing with beds that had been pushed together.

"They both improved from this point. I know it was because of the loving touch, being together," said Ely.

This does not mean that recovery has been easy. Virginia and Tom are still struggling with confusion, fatigue, weakness and anxiety after their two-week stay at the hospital, followed by two weeks of hospital rehabilitation. Now they are in a new assisted living residence, allowing outdoor visits with their families.

"The doctors told us that it will take a lot of time and they will never go back where they were before Covid," said their daughter, Karen Kreager, also from Nashville. "But it's good. I'm so grateful that they went through that and we spend more time with them." And to cross this pandemic with your healthiest, do not miss these 35 places you are most likely to catch Covid .