In December of 2020, Brooke Keaton, a 41-year-old preschool teacher in Charlotte, North Carolina, and her family fell ill. At first, she was congested and had a cough, but soon she developed a high fever and felt debilitatingly weak. “I should have probably gone to the hospital,” she recalls, “but I have a now-four-year-old and a twelve-year-old and I wasn’t about to leave my two babies at home.” Keaton had COVID-19. After a grueling two weeks, she recovered, “but I still didn’t feel right,” she recalls. Since then, Keaton has been battling a host of symptoms that have put her out of work. She felt her heart race even when she was sitting down. And though some of her symptoms have improved, she still fatigues easily and suffers from insomnia and memory loss. “Brain fog doesn’t even begin to cover what I felt,” says Keaton. “I have to set reminders ...
Multiple Possible Causes of Long COVID Come into Focus
Recent studies have lent support for a variety of hypotheses explaining the debilitating symptoms affecting millions of people after SARS-CoV-2 infection.
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Meet the Author
As she was completing her graduate thesis on the neuroscience of vision, Natalia found that she loved to talk to other people about how science impacts them. This passion led Natalia to take up writing and science communication, and she has contributed to outlets including Scientific American and the Broad Institute. Natalia completed her PhD in neuroscience at the University of Washington and graduated from Cornell University with a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences. She was previously an intern at The Scientist, and currently freelances from her home in Seattle.
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