"When Children’s Covid-19 Symptoms Won’t Go Away
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Some parents report that their kids’ symptoms have lingered for months. Experts, meanwhile, aren’t sure what’s going on.
Top: Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
By Megan E. Doherty
09.02.2020
hen 7-year-old Jake Mahler began showing symptoms of Covid-19 in mid-April, his mother, Cindy Mahler, stayed calm. An aerospace engineer in Clear Lake, Texas, Mahler is used to putting puzzle pieces together and taking a calm, cool-headed approach to problems. “Kids seemed to fare better,” she said. “So I wasn’t necessarily too scared.”
Jake’s symptoms stretched into early May. When he finally went four days without a fever by the middle of the month, Mahler thought it was over. But then his temperature came back. On her phone, Mahler has logged Jake’s fever regularly since April 14, when it first reached 101.5:
April 15: 101.6 | April 16: 101.9 | April 17: 100.5
April 20: 101.2 | April 25: 100.6 | April 26: 101.1
July 3: 100.8 | July 20: 100.2 | July 23: 100.6
July 28: 100.5 | July 29: 100.3 | July 30: 100.5
Now, four and a half months since he first got sick, Mahler says that Jake is still experiencing Covid-19 symptoms: exhaustion, intermittent low-grade fevers, sore throat, coughing, enlarged lymph nodes, painful limbs, insomnia, and mysterious splotchy skin that comes and goes.
“Never in a million years could I imagine that four months later our bodies are still trying to recover,” said Mahler, whose own Covid-19 symptoms began about five days before her son’s, and have persisted since. “We weren’t hearing about any of these stories right at the time. It was April. It was, ‘You have it for two weeks and you’re better.’”
At first, Mahler said, Jake’s pediatrician believed them. Mahler’s own test came back negative, but her doctor said it was probably a false negative, and the pediatrician confirmed Jake had something viral that was highly likely to be Covid-19, too. Every two or three days, the pediatrician called to check-in. Concerned, she even sent them dinner one night.
But as their recovery dragged on, Mahler said, the symptoms continued and the support stopped. “She said, ‘Just stop taking his temperature. Jake, there’s nothing wrong with you and there’s nothing wrong with your mommy,’” Mahler recounted."
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https://undark.org/2020/09/02/kids-covid-19-long-haulers/_______________________________________
