A Pennsylvania student is speaking out to warn others after a brief bout with COVID-19 left her with heart failure.
Temple University student Madeline Neville took to Facebook on December 8th to document her ordeal. In the lengthy post, she says that she visited her family’s home for Thanksgiving after getting over coronavirus in late October. Although she received a negative test before returning home from her trip, the 21-year-old says that she soon began to experience symptoms again.
“I was feeling completely normal and was able to put my COVID experience behind me. After all, I am a twenty year old girl in good health. I am the subset of the population that is supposed to be best equipped to able to handle COVID.” She went on to add, “I experienced such intense chest pain, shortness of breath, and a slew of other horrible symptoms that came on suddenly and as a complete surprise.”
Her symptoms got so intense that she had to be airlifted to UPenn’s Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, where doctors determined that she was in congestive heart failure. The doctors told her that she had a condition called myocarditis, which is the heart muscle’s inflammation. This condition has been linked to patients who have been diagnosed with COVID-19.
“I have been hospitalized for the past nine days, where I struggled everyday to do even the most menial tasks like going to the bathroom and showering on my own, brushing my own teeth and hair, or even walking 10 steps,” she revealed in her post.
The young woman says that she wanted to serve as a cautionary tale for how harshly the virus can affect anyone, no matter how young or old you may be.
“I was completely healthy. It is quite easy, for young people, especially, to take their health for granted. I know that I did. I believed that my youth and health would allow me to make it through any run in I had with the virus relatively unscathed. Unfortunately for me, this was not the case.”
Neville was released from the hospital in early December.
