Worked for me and gave me my life back
I was infected with COVID in April 2022 and a month later found myself definitely stuck with long COVID symptoms that were not going away (if anything they were only getting worse). I found myself stuck with levels of brain fog, physical weakness and fatigue, any one of which would in its own right have been enough to keep me from living my life, but combined were a multi-headed hydra of debilitation that left me unable to work or enjoy life.
When the big institutional medical providers I had always turned to for care proved unable to do much for long COVID (even in their long COVID centers!), an old college friend suggested I reach out to a new long COVID focused startup called RTHM.
Their website at the time looked more like squarespace than serious medical enterprise (it has since improved), I took a chance and it turns out thy had a lot of dedicated intellectual horsepower hiding behind that unassuming webpage!
Dr. Stuart Malcolm is the real deal, with degrees from Princeton and Emory and practice at OneMedical before moving over to RTHM. The depth of his knowledge about long COVID, its various manifestations and potential treatments for them was matched only by the depth of his compassion and patience for people who are struggling with the worst and most vexing medical surprise in their lives.
He worked closely with me to understand my situation, put me through just an astonishing amount of testing (much to the relief of my fog-addled brain, they arranged everything so all I had to do was show up and present my arm to the people at Quest diagnostics), and use all that information to set out a treatment plan based on. We met biweekly and then monthly to consider progress and the results of the latest tests (there were always more tests to run!), and discuss our next moves. He was a patient and great communicator.
And to be clear, this treatment was real medicine. Think more off-label drug regimens modeled after the latest trial preprints (and RTHM’s ever-growing corpus of experience treating long haulers) than healing crystals
I appreciate that Dr. Malcolm and RTHM were candid from day 1. They eschewed any claims of miracle cures, or guaranteed results, or a 100% return to my pre-COVID levels of health, and said it would not be quick—when it came to recovery times they made it very clear this was a journey to be measured not in days or weeks but in months (or longer).
And sure enough, it took a full year of cycling through different medications, but I am delighted to report that I am among the lucky ones who not only improved, but made a full recovery. I have no weakness in my limbs, my brain fog has vanished, and I am able to go to full-on HIIT classes without any sort of PEM fatigue crashes afterwards. I am working and spending time with my family and enjoying my life like that cursed pandemic never happened.
Those of a skeptical bent can point out that correlation is not causation--and they are absolutely right! I cannot prove that RTHM is the reason behind my full recovery But I can show some pretty darn impressive correlations, and I know if (god forbid) i got long COVID again, I would return to RTHM without hesitation.
19 July 2023
Unprompted review