Owen Sound's The Sun Times published an article June 15, 2023
By Scott Dunn
COVID-19 may be in the rear-view mirror for many, but nurse practitioner Michelle Lanteigne deals with people infected with the lingering pandemic virus every day.
She runs an acute-care clinic for people with active COVID-19 and one for long COVID patients at the Owen Sound Family Health Team offices on 1st Avenue West. The clinic is only available to health team patients.
“While no one wants to talk about it, COVID’s still here,” Lanteigne said in an interview. “I think there’s also a lot of people out there that don’t know why they’re not feeling like themselves again.”
There’s been no lack of demand for services of the long-COVID clinic either, she said. As of this week, 26 patients had been discharged and 36 patients are actively in the program, which began in April 2022.
“A lot of the people who come to our clinic feel that they’re very alone. That whether it’s colleagues at work or friends, (they) just don’t understand why they’re not getting better,” Lanteigne said.
“Although we don’t know everything about this condition, we have a lot of strategies that we can use to help you feel better.”
With no universally accepted definition of long COVID and no test for it, a diagnosis is symptom-based. Lanteigne adopted the National Health Service England’s long COVID definition: having COVID-19 symptoms from four to 12 weeks and then signs and symptoms develop during or after COVID lasting more than 12 weeks.
She sees people who mostly report profound fatigue or a cough but then she finds they have other long COVID symptoms they hadn’t thought were related. There are more than 200 related symptoms reported in medical literature, she said.
Lanteigne said that at the long COVID clinic, which she runs with an occupational therapist and respiratory therapist, “we believe you when you tell us you’re having these symptoms.”