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hospitalized twice, with
pneumonia that got worse and
worse, and COVID-19, evident
from the shattered glass look
of her lungs on a CT scan. It
was all a blur — Cooper doesn’t
remember much of her hospital
stay. Though she started to feel
closer to normal by May — her
ability to taste has returned
to normal — the onset of
the virus was followed by
months of drawn-out, debili-
tating medical and emotional
complications. She’s devel-
oped an auto-immune disease
(which may not be connected
to COVID, but is nevertheless
challenging); she hasn’t seen
her children or grandchildren
in months; she feels angst and
guilt related to her survival,
coupled with newfound pains
in her joints and fatigue that’s
never abated.

And her experience — that
of the COVID long hauler,
as those who have endured
similar trials have come to call
themselves — is hardly unique.

“It’s quite a scary time,”
Cooper said. “Our world is
scary right now.”
Long haulers, according to
Harvard Health’s Coronavirus
Resource Center, are those who
contracted COVID-19 and have
not fully recovered weeks or
even months after their initial
symptoms. Some long haulers
began with mild or moderate
symptoms; others may have
first showed symptoms toward
the beginning of the pandemic,
but never received lab confir-
mation of COVID-19 due to the
initial scarcity of tests. Much
like the symptoms of COVID-
19, those of “post-COVID-19
syndrome,” as it has been
termed, vary widely, encom-
passing fatigue, shortness of
breath, continued loss of taste
and smell and much more.

A survey of the increas-
ingly large Facebook groups,
WhatsApp group chats and
Slack channels dedicated to
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Lori Cooper in Morocco in March.

When she returned to the U.S., she
was diagnosed with COVID-19.

Photo by Rabbi Neil Cooper
Dr. Fredric Jaffe
Courtesy of the Lewis Katz School of
Medicine at Temple University
Congregants welcome home David Forsted after a lengthy hospital stay
caused by COVID-19.
Photo by Julie LaFair Miller Photography
It’s a novel virus. So we don’t have a year [of] data. We don’t have two
years, we don’t have five years, we don’t have 10 years, as we do other
diseases.” DR. FREDRIC JAFFE
support between long haulers
reveals the widespread anxiety
and fear around the long-tail
effects of coronavirus; tens of
thousands of long haulers share
aches and pains, odd tastes and
new sensations, asking if anyone
else has heard anything new on
the news or from their doctor.

Rabbanit Dasi Fruchter,
leader of the South Philadelphia
Shtiebel, has found more comfort
than she expected from such
groups. Since Fruchter, her
mother and her father were all
diagnosed with COVID-19 in
March, their bodies have tangled
with the virus in different ways.

Her father, asymptomatic; her
mother, hospitalized; Fruchter,
to this day, smelling and tasting
rancidity for nearly eight months,
along with fatigue, nausea and
headaches. That’s not to mention
the confusion and grief that she’s
learned to dwell with.

Though not a heavy social
media user, Fruchter began to
join some of the larger long
hauler groups, trying to get a
sense of what was happening
to her.

“We are each other’s doctor.

It’s very strange,” she said. “But
since there’s no real data out
there yet about what exactly
to do, it’s like the way that
I think about a beit midrash
sometimes. It’s communally
sourced knowledge.”
Dr. Fredric Jaffe, a pulmo-
nologist at Temple University
Hospital, explained that
doctors simply don’t know
enough about COVID-19 yet
to be able to understand what’s
happening to long haulers like
Cooper and Fruchter.

“It’s a novel virus. So we
don’t have a year [of] data. We
don’t have two years, we don’t
have five years, we don’t have 10
years, as we do other diseases,”
he said. “So the symptoms that
we’re seeing, like fatigue and
continued shortness of breath, or
headaches — name a symptom
and somebody probably reported
it. Did it activate these things?
Or is it part of the disease? We
don’t know just yet.”
Only with time, Jaffe said,
will the long term effects of
COVID-19 (on long haulers
and non-long haulers alike) be
more fully comprehended.

But even the short-term
observations are concerning;
Dr. Sadia Benzaquen, a
pulmonologist in the Einstein
Healthcare Network, said that
he’s seen a high incidence of
JEWISH EXPONENT
in the best physical shape of
his life prior to the pandemic,
remembers almost nothing of
what happened between that
day and late August. He was
sedated, he was intubated and
he was on a ventilator. Today,
Forsted needs to sit on a bench
in the shower and can only
move about with the assistance
of a walker. His right wrist
appears to have lost most of its
function, and he was forced to
learn how to brush his teeth
and comb his hair with the left.

“They don’t talk very much
about people like me,” Forsted
said. l
severe lung scarring among
COVID-19 patients in the ICU.

When David Forsted, a
retired doctor himself, tells the
story of his battle with COVID-
19, he does so with slow, labored
sentences. Forsted and his wife
were on the same synagogue
trip to Morocco as Lori Cooper.

“My birthday is March 24.

I woke up on March 25, and I
couldn’t breathe,” Forsted said. jbernstein@jewishexponent.com;
Forsted, 74, who said he was 215-832-0740
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OCTOBER 29, 2020
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