BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — Each day we learn more about the COVID-19 virus and its impact on those who have it, but one thing we do know about the virus is that the impact it has on each person can be very different.
7 News anchor Katie Morse spoke with two women more than a year after they battled the virus to hear their experience and what symptoms they're still dealing with today.
Almost one year after her release from Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center, Talia Kalisiak says she's feeling much better, but still has lingering impacts of the virus.
"Pretty much my whole memory from November 11th until I woke up, there's just nothing," Kalisiak said. "Most of the lasting symptoms now are still like muscle weakness, and I'm trying to gain that back."
Talia lost feeling in her legs and arms as she battled the virus.
She spent time in a rehab facility and has been doing physical therapy ever since.
"Now I'm feeling pretty good," Kalisiak said. "I'm able to drive myself around in the car which is a big improvement."
It was spring of 2021 -when Bernadette Singer-Kreitzbender shared her COVID-19 story with 7 News.
The mom from Lakeview told us then that the virus altered her senses of smell and taste to the point where foods she used to love, disgusted her.
"Imagine a rat that's been dead for three weeks," Singer-Kreitzbender said. "Everything smells like that. Everything tastes like that."
Seven months later Bernadette says 90 percent of her senses are back.
She practiced smell training, where you actively smell different scents each day to help recover your sense of smell.
But she says some foods like yogurt, sour cream, and cream cheese still don't taste like they used to.
The range of symptoms is something that makes this virus unique and so unpredictable.
Talia says as we move into 2022, she wants people to remember what the disease can do.
"Know for sure that COVID-19 is not the flu," Kalisiak said. "I see people say COVID-19 is the flu, and if you haven't gotten the vaccine, if you haven't gotten the booster, go get it. Don't get the chance of having to deal with what I did."
