Edmonton nurse returns to work after long COVID [Video]

An Edmonton nurse is back on the job after years spent wondering if she would ever work again.

Stephanie Kendrick is one of hundreds of thousands of Canadians to contract long COVID, a disease that remains difficult to diagnose and tricky to treat.

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A new report by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine suggests long COVID is associated with more than 200 symptoms affecting nearly every organ system.

Those symptoms, the study said, were found to decrease physical and cognitive abilities for six months to upwards of two years after being infected.

For Kendrick, it was 36 months.

She was working on the COVID-19 unit at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in 2021 when she was infected. She went home with a fever one night, and returned the next morning in an ambulance.

“I couldn’t say more than a couple words without gasping for breath,” Kendrick said. “I …