West Warwick woman with long COVID benefits from physical therapy
A West Warwick woman with long COVID is benefiting from physical therapy.
Donna Stansfield, 70, was diagnosed with COVID last year on Nov. 1. She and her husband, Mike, both had the virus but very few symptoms.
“I got loss of taste and fatigue,” said Stansfield.
Within just weeks, she started to go downhill.
“I felt like I was starting to lose my balance a little bit,” recalled Stansfield.
This is coming from a woman who was so active before.
“My husband and I have a 56-foot power boat and the two of us have taken it back and forth to Florida prior to this happening,” said Stansfield, whose conditions worsened. “It started with numbness in the feet, off balance and it seemed to move up to my legs and to the waist.”
A second opinion netted some answers: Donna had a severe vitamin B12 deficiency related to her COVID infection. B12 is needed to help fight infection. In addition to B12 injections, she now goes to physical therapy three times a week.
“Hers is a difficult case. It is a longer duration, a little bit more significant even though her symptoms had not put her in the hospital,” said Paul Lydeard, physical therapist at the Johnston location of Pappas OPT/OPT physical and hand therapy.
Here, she is learning to do again what most of us take for granted.
