In 2020, I was a fairly hyper-healthy person who trained every year to ride competitively in long distance amateur bicycle races. I often drove and sometimes flew with my bike to events all over the country. I’d even had fellow cyclists blow smoke at me about maybe thinking about tuning up to compete in cycling in the Senior Olympics. In one
particular year, I’d ended third overall in my age group in the state of Missouri. Let’s give me the benefit of the doubt that I’d been racing more than two other guys…

Point being though, that I was way above average in fitness, suffered from no long term illnesses, and rarely even from minor day-to-day ones.

In January, 2021 , my wife Lyn and I came back to the US from a trip to Mexico and we both soon came down with the original Covid. It’d proved a relatively easy, modest and brief illness, though as I recovered she seemed to head straight into what would later
become known as “Long Haul” symptoms. We barely knew what that term was, and certainly, nor did doctors. Nobody knew at that time that the symptoms of Long Haul Covid would prove to be in most cases worse than the disease itself.

Dial forward a couple months and we were quickly approaching a planned return back to Mexico. However, with Lyn seemingly losing more ground everyday, and having very little of it left, we decided to go forward with the trip just to live our lives as comfortably
as possible. We fully recognized the great likelihood of her imminent passing. But then God or the universe or blind luck, whichever one cares to believe, intervened in a spectacular set of coincidences that are described in Lyn’s story. So while she began to undergo stem cell treatment and get back on her feet, I returned to the US in a few weeks. Warning, there will be a pattern arising here.

Before returning to the US, I was feeling fine and looked healthy and normal. There were no reasons to anticipate that my physical and mental health would soon decline precipitously.

Long Covid hit me in the same manner Hemingway described how he’d become bankrupt… “Gradually, then suddenly.”

While in the US, I began to not be as well as I had been. One day I was out and active and living a full and enjoyable life, and then next I could only gingerly walk downstairs in the morning to sit in a chair, and find myself drained by that tiny effort. So I’d fester all day staring at a TV screen and entirely oblivious and uncaring as to whether it was even
turned on.

My vital signs became erratic and quite worrisome. From the time I planted myself in a seat downstairs, my blood pressure would rise about 10 points every fifteen minutes or so. In short order it’d be climbing through 170/120 with the sky seemingly being the limit. I’d never had blood pressure problems before. So there I sat with a blood pressure cuff and a bottle of Lisinopril and a bottle of Clonodine, chasing the digits with the meds until my body finally succumbed to the chemicals. Then my BP would drop like a stone down to dangerous levels around 80/50’s, and I’d wonder how I was ever going to make my way back to bed.

During that time, unbeknownst to me, Covid was silently and quickly damaging my lungs. Before I knew it, and timeframe wise I mean within days of the proverbial Long
Covid greyhound bus hitting me, I could no longer walk twenty yards without succumbing to oxygen exhaustion. I’d done many ‘century rides’ at full gas in the heat of Texas summers and not gotten so blown-up physically as merely walking up and down our short driveway in my Covid body.

I hadn’t had the slightest idea of the extensive micro-clotting occurring throughout my body, and how my lungs were being permanently savaged. My brain became foggy. Depression set in, and at times my thoughts and words became aggressive, as if I were bipolar. I began to experience suicidal ideation. Fortunately for me, but in no way enjoyable to them, were family members who picked up that Dr. Jeff was descending
into a very dark Mr. Hyde.