PTSD, anxiety and learning to walk again — recovering from ICU can take years

When Anthony George woke up from a coma in an Ontario ICU last summer, he thought the worst of his COVID-19 infection was over — but he has since discovered that was just the beginning of a long road to recovery.

"I thought I could just hop out of bed and take off. Little did I know my legs were too weak to do anything. They still are. I could only walk for so long and for it to start getting shaky and I got to sit down and rest. Yeah, I'm 53 years old, but I feel like I'm 70," he said during a recent occupational therapy session.

"I could almost cry sometimes, but I just end up cursing, yelling away at myself."

George was admitted to the BIuewater Health Hospital in Sarnia with shortness of breath in June 2021. He spent the next 70 days in a coma in the ICU, on a ventilator and a feeding tube. He needed to be resuscitated several times.

"He also experienced a lot of ups and downs in the ICU and a lot of infections," said one of his physicians, Dr. Richard Cheong. "He had a very rough go."

George spent another two months in the medical and rehabilitation units of the hospital. Since his release in October, he's been going to outpatient rehab sessions twice a week as part of a community reintegration program.

COVID-19 irreversibly damaged his lungs so he remains on oxygen; the tank hisses as he struggles to do tasks such as open a peanut butter jar and button his shirt.

"We're trying to get some of those day-to-day activities that he's struggling to do or trying to work on some of those things so that he can gain some more independence," his occupational therapist, Andrea Duff, said as she helped him stretch his arm and hand muscles. 

There are currently nearly 1,200 Canadians in intensive care units with COVID-19. According to stats compiled by Health Canada, 21,001 patients have been admitted to ICUs across the country since the pandemic began. Nearly 2,500 (2.1 per cent) of them needed to be on ventilators.

George is one of thousands who have been discharged and are struggling to regain their old lives. They're finding challenges they did not expect — not just for their physical rehabilitation, but also for their mental health.

Experts say surviving any ICU stay is just the start of the journey and they worry the necessary supports won't be available in a health-care system slammed by nearly three years of a pandemic.

WATCH | Serious consequences of long ICU stays:

"This has huge implications," said Dr. Shannon Fernando, a critical care physician and researcher at Lakeridge Health Corporation in Oshawa, Ont. 

"Traditionally people were high-fiving each other when a patient would survive in the ICU with a severe critical illness. … It is still a win. But we're learning more and more about what these patients experience afterward."