On Getting Back into Shape After Covid and Injuries

Time in nature is good for the soul, but this was also a bit of a post-covid training camp trying to recover lung function. I ended up spending 4 days, 67 kilometers and 2,600 vertical meters of elevation gain at elevations of roughly 2,000 meters

The fourth day – the day after I filmed this video – I had a breakthrough. Not sure what happened physiologically, but all of a sudden I could walk up hills at a not-horrible pace and didn’t need to take breaks every 5-10 minutes. Very pleased with this turnaround!

For background, I dodged Covid for 3 years with masking and testing, but eventually my luck had to run out. I caught it either at a firefighting hazmat conference (oh the irony) in the States or on the flight back. KN95s are like seatbelts – they work, but don’t guarantee safety 100% of the time 🙁

First, I was flat in bed for 8 days, 23 hours a day. Fever, nausea, coughing, short of breath, the works. I ended up in the hospital for remdesivir IV infusions which might have helped a little bit. After that I thought I was getting better – did some easy workouts and even gently rolled twice – but then I relapsed and it came back hard.

Extreme shortness of breath and fever brought me back to the hospital on my birthday, where they were initially worried about a pulmonary embolism (blood clot in the lungs). That got ruled out and it was decided that the difficulty breathing was probably ‘just’ damage to the microvasculature in the lungs. Anyway, I ended up on more drugs to deal with that.

Since it’s 2023 I’m doubtless going to be attacked by some trolls with degrees from Joe Rogan Do Your Own Research University, questioning how I could be so badly affected despite being up to date in my vaccinations.

That’s pretty simple.

In 2015 I had a life-saving kidney transplant, and to stop my own immune system from attacking my kidney I have to take immunosuppressants for life. The side effects of these drugs are pretty minimal, but they do make you a LOT more vulnerable to Covid (the infection fatality rate was 2,000% higher than the regular population last I looked).

So I’m much MORE vulnerable to Covid because of the transplant, and much LESS vulnerable to Covid because I’m fully vaccinated and boosted. The two basically cancel out, and it likely would have been much, much worse had I not been up to date on my boosters.

Cheers,
Stephan Kesting

P.S. Check out my new book “Perseverance, Life and Death in the Subarctic” on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Indigo/Chapters, or your local bookstore! It was an incredibly difficult journey, but I think it turned into a pretty good book! https://www.amazon.com/Perseverance-Death-Subarctic-Stephan-Kesting/dp/1639368612/