Soccer Player Back on Field after Complications from COVID-19 PKG

CLEVELAND – Meredith Coloian is happy to be back on the field after complications from COVID-19 almost sidelined her for good.

“I tried my best to push through it, obviously though, at times, it was really bad and I couldn’t play,” she recalled.

The 19-year-old contracted the virus in January of 2021. She said her symptoms were pretty mild at the time, but as soon as she started playing soccer again, she noticed some chest pain.

“I noticed it first at practice on the field, it just felt like a weird sharp pain and I almost felt like I couldn’t run, I couldn’t run very fast and I didn’t know what it was,” said Meredith.

Concerned, her parents brought her to see Tamanna Singh, MD, cardiologist at Cleveland Clinic.

“Knowing that she had acute COVID, as a cardiologist our first inclination is to rule out the quote, unquote scary stuff,” said Dr. Singh.

Singh said she conducted a series of tests on Meredith and didn’t find anything of major concern, which was good news.

“Fortunately, her heart structure was normal and function was normal and the MRI confirmed she had no inflammation of the heart muscle, so no myocarditis and no inflammation of the pericardial sac, or pericarditis,” she said.

At that point, Meredith was given clearance to play. However, it took more than a year to finally get back to where she is now.

“I would do like 15 minute intervals and then 20 and 30 and then just keep going up, and eventually I was back to being able to play full time again, as long as I was able to,” said Meredith.

She said it was hard not to be impatient, but her perseverance paid off.

“It was the hardest thing for me to do, but time usually makes it better,” she said.