Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Rosalia Roger estimated she’s had the virus four different times—Once in early 2020, once in July 2022, and two more times in 2023. In March of 2020, she thought she had a bad cold, but her health kept declining. By the end of that year, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. When she woke up from surgery, she couldn’t move the right side of her body and had what she describes as excruciating pain.
It wasn’t until Rosalia attended Madonna’s community post-COVID seminar series that she connected the dots of her health problems.
“It was through a lymphatic massage therapist that I had even heard of long COVID because my symptoms were so similar to what other people were dealing with,” Rosalia said. “I took it upon myself to do the research. That’s what we do as COVID patients.We go look. I found out that Madonna was not only having the seminar but also has a post-COVID program.”
Taking Madonna’s online self-assessment survey, Rosalia’s concerns were validated. She enrolled herself in the post-COVID program.
“Rosie was really struggling on multiple fronts with her health when she first came to Madonna,” Dr. Natalie Williams, PhD, translational research director of health psychology at Madonna’s Research Institute, said. “She had multiple health problems in addition to long COVID and all of that was taking a toll on her mental wellbeing. She had gotten to a place where she felt like she was a burden to her family and friends.”
Through the post-COVID clinic, Rosalia participated in weekly physical, occupational, speech and vision therapies.
“She had a lot of fatigue, a lot of just energy issues, a lot of breathing issues,” Jade Bertsch, PT, DPT, Rosalia’s physical therapist, said. “Her whole life had really changed because she couldn’t do a lot of things she enjoyed,like baking or going for walks or spending time with her friends and family.”
After her first physical therapy session with Jade, Rosalia remembers feeling overwhelmed by emotion.
“I went home crying,” Rosalia said. “But they were tears of joy because I had hope.Before that, I didn’t want to live. I wanted to die. No one should be living like that.”
Madonna’s experts were able to guide Rosalia through different exercises and arm her with tools to help mitigate some of her post-COVID symptoms.
“We really worked on a lot of activity pacing and energy conservation but also worked on a lot of strengthening and breathing exercises,” Bertsch said. “She was able to progress and move around and walk and just be more active in life. That physical improvement also helped her mental health improvements skyrocket.”
With new strategies in place, support and access to community resources, Rosalia graduated from the post-COVID clinic, but the journey did not stop there.
“The program at Madonna is unlike any other treatment that I ever had,” Rosalia said. “It takes care of physical. It takes care of occupational, which includes vision, voice, speech, pelvic floor, and mental health, and then to top it off, they don’t just leave you there.”
Rosalia connected with Dennis Scofield, Madonna’s research exercise physiologist, at the Wellness Club for the next step in her recovery.
“With the post-COVID clinic, the primary emphasis is regaining function through physical therapy, and once they graduate from that program, my job is to try to integrate more exercise, physical activity and things they can do beyond physical therapy to try and continue that recovery journey,” Scofield said.
The pair started with an initial assessment with land-based activities. Scofield was monitoring the way Rosalia moved, pain she was having, and what her biggest deficits were. He followed up the next day, where she was facing some delayed onset muscle soreness and fatigue. That’s when they transitioned to more water-based activities.
“When you develop an exercise program for people, you have to choose things that they like to do,” Scofield said. “Otherwise, we see higher attrition. Oftentimes with folks, especially with long-COVID that have chronic pain issues, the water track and aqua therapy exercises seem to do well for them and in Rosie’s case, it did really well for her.”
In a month of working with Scofield, Rosie saw improvements in her walking speed, her endurance, lower body strength and fatigue. Armed with the right tools and techniques, she continues to go to Madonna’s Wellness Club several days a week on her own to continue her exercise program. She’s transitioned from needing a wheelchair or walker to complete independence for short distances.
“At one point, I wasn’t even getting out of my bed,” Rosalia said. “Now, I have a walking stick that I don’t really use for balance, but I use it as a reminder of what’s leading me. It’s not a crutch, but a reminder of what I’ve been through.”
Having completed her medical fitness program, Rosalia continues to use Madonna’s spectrum of post-COVID services to keep up her momentum. She participates in Dr. Williams’ THRIVE group.
“THRIVE is an acceptance and commitment therapy-based group for people struggling with long COVID,” Williams said. “The goal is to help people develop psychological flexibility, which involves connecting with their personal values and creating goals that are aligned with those values, but also learning how to manage the difficult thoughts and feelings that come up, particularly in the hard and challenging times of life.”
The group offers Rosalia peer support and a chance to cheer on others as they navigate their own post-COVID journey. Her advice to others is to act sooner rather than later.
“As a mom, as a wife, I had so much going on and sometimes I would say, ‘I can’t. I’m too busy,’” Rosalia said. “You’re never too busy for yourself, so don’t wait. Choices I’ve made to not take care of myself affected me because of COVID. It affected me even worse, so now I have to take care of that. I have to manage it, but having the tools and the resources makes it feel like less of a huge mountain to climb.”
Putting her faith in God and herself paid off for Rosalia in her recovery.
“She wasn’t meeting her own expectations of the kind of person that she wanted to be, and she decided to make a change, and she committed 100% to that and has kept going,” Williams said. “She realizes that sometimes it means two steps forward and one step back, but it’s really that continuous forward progression that will get her where she wants to go.”
She’s not magically healed, and she still has work to do on her recovery journey but looking back on where she started to where she is now, Rosalia says her future is now filled with limitless potential.
“Life is very unpredictable,” she said. “But even in the worst circumstances, when you find the right combination of support, you can overcome anything you are faced with, and I truly believe that because I’m sitting here. I’m breathing. 952 days ago, I didn’t want to live and every day now I celebrate.”
That celebration looks like cooking meals for her family, taking up painting and even writing a book. Rosalia is traveling with her husband and enjoying lunches with friends.
“I know I’m not free from getting sick,” Rosalia says. “I know I still have health issues, but what I got here at Madonna means I’m not going to go back down a spiral of not knowing what to do. I already have the cheat sheet. That’s how I feel—like I got a life cheat code.”
