When her school closed down in March 2020, Chimére Sweeney, an English teacher in Baltimore, thought she’d return to her students once the U.S. got a handle on the new SARS-CoV-2 virus. But “life had a different plan” when she got Covid shortly after — and then never recovered, she said.
At first, Sweeney developed only muscle aches. By the second week, she started having panic attacks, blurry vision, constipation and partial hearing loss. Half of her face would freeze “like concrete.” She forgot phone numbers and addresses and she developed a stutter. Within a month after getting infected, she lost 30 pounds.
“I was told that after two weeks I would be better,” Sweeney, now 42, said. “But my two weeks never came.”
Almost five years later, she’s still struggling with severe whole body pain, sleeplessness, depression, painful rashes and boils, uncontrollable urination, short-term memory loss, and irregular periods.
“I went from being a healthy 37-year-old woman who may have had to pop an allergy pill every now and again, to taking over 10 to 12 medications per day to control almost every system in my body,” Sweeney said.
The federal government has cancelled dozens of grants to study how to prevent new HIV infections...
