'I had no idea what lay in store on the day I was confirmed Covid‐19 positive'

Dr Emer Joyce said new understanding of the disease was emerging and there were still fears over possible long-term consequences for patients.

A leading cardiologist and heart expert has described contracting Covid-19 and said: "I feel as if I know less now than before this all started".

Dr Emer Joyce has written about her experiences both as patient and medic, specifically about SARS‐CoV‐2 myocarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle. 

A consultant cardiologist at the Mater Hospital in Dublin, Dr Joyce tweeted of the piece she wrote for the European Journal of Heart Failure: "The article I wish I'd never had to write, about the experience I wish I'd never had to have, in a year many of us wish we never had to live and work through . . . while the condition may be transient, the experience is lifelong". 

Titled COVID‐19, myocarditis, and the other side of the bed, Dr Joyce recalls making a presentation in September 2019 at the Heart Failure Society of America Annual Scientific Meeting held in Philadelphia, USA, with no one present aware that a new syndrome was on the horizon. 

Little did I know then that exactly one year later, I myself would still be recovering from SARS‐CoV‐2 myocarditis."

"I'm grateful now that I had no idea what lay in store on the day I was confirmed Covid‐19 positive; at the time I accepted it as a necessary inevitability to be able to move forward with clinical certainty after the initial relief of a false negative swab the week before was obliterated by refractory, daily viremic assault."

She said she queried the overlap between the coronavirus and myocarditis and added: "Since my predominantly systemic syndrome first began, chest pains of various features and flavours had been daily bedfellows and in my boundless experience, I wrote them all off as benign actors. 

However, I do recall the moment I accepted the veracity of those underlying nagging thoughts questioning this assessment. 

The pain at this particular moment of clarity was exertional, limiting, central, felt like a pressure and was associated with a feeling that if not quite ‘angor animi’ [a patient's perception that they are dying] was certainly close."

She said she had been diagnosed with her heart ailment one month after her Covid-19 diagnosis, several days after a malignant chest pain episode, and five weeks after general viral symptom onset.

"As, of course, expected with a condition in its infancy, many known unknowns and unknown unknowns remain to be discovered, and despite identifying as an ‘expert’ in the myocardium and its whims, prejudices and vulnerabilities, and subsequently being held hostage at its hands, I feel as if I know less now than before this all started," she said.

Offering what she said was "a birds‐eye view of the physician as patient, the sub‐specialist as sub‐specialist condition sufferer", she wrote that "Firstly, from a patient perspective, it is okay for their doctor not to have all the answers."

Dr Joyce said new understanding of the disease was emerging and there were still fears over possible long-term consequences for patients, but she added: "Finally, a crucial learning point of this experience for me has been its reinforcement of the true privilege associated with my usual position as a clinician."

You can read Dr Joyce's article here