Katherine hadn't realised that physiotherapy could help with her breathing problems.

Transcript

Initially, I didn’t really understand what good physiotherapy could possibly do for me, because my symptoms were – like my arms, my legs were fine. I didn’t really understand that there are so many muscles involved in breathing that you could actually exercise, so I was pretty skeptical at first. But I had a really good experience with community physiotherapy, so I, basically, just – I want to say, threw caution to the wind. But it was more put my faith in the expertise of the physiotherapists and did what they told me to do. And it was sort of a slow and steady like, “Can you do this? How long could you tolerate this?” And through that process, I learned that I also was experiencing some more neurological symptoms: dizziness, lack of coordination, extremely low tolerance for anything that involved physical anything. So, whereas, walking from room to room, walking from my hallway to the elevator, walking from the elevator to my car, used to trigger it. Now, I found pushing myself a little further, it didn’t necessarily exacerbate symptoms, but it helped me identify new ones, mostly neurological. Which really surprised me, because I thought that COVID was a disease that attacked – or an infection that attacked your lungs, your – like things that would normally affect you when you have a cold: your nose, your ears, perhaps, your breathing. I certainly didn’t think that there could be any correlation between any neurological anything and COVID.

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