BUFFALO, N.Y. — People are trying to navigate a new normal following the COVID-19 pandemic. For some, not a lot has changed. For others, their whole life has been flipped upside down.

For those battling long COVID, there is now a recovery center in Buffalo, the only one outside of New York City.

Alexsandra Lopez is one of those patients. For her, the relationship she shares with her doctor is everything.

“She always believed me or went to other practitioners, not necessarily," Lopez said. "So, it's been very challenging because what people would tell me, they’d say, ‘you're surviving, and you’re so this.’ And it is, but I'm not the same person.”

Lopez is one of 100 patients getting help at UBMD’s Long COVID Recovery Center.

“The brain fog, exhaustion, just the logistics of coming here," said Lopez. "I was trying to make the windows as narrow as possible and go home and rest for all their appointments. Like just the thought of having a 12-hour day was freaking me out.”

Lopez sings and is a community activist and a speech pathologist.

“I have a lot of identities, so I can be other things,” she laughed.

But most days now, she can’t even remember her birthday.

“Or my phone number that I’ve had for 25 years,” Lopez said.

Her world has been turned upside down. But thanks to her doctor, Jennifer Abeles, and nurse practitioner Trudy Stern, she’s getting the guidance she needs.

Getting medical help can be scary. Stern says you can expect an hour initial exam, where you just chat.

“Which is such a luxury to get a complete history and talk to people,” Stern smiled.”

Patients are recruited from the Western New York Community-Based Long COVID Registry. It’s a phone call Stern says offers more relief than they initially realized.

“I've had people come in and cry," Stern said.

There’s a social worker and an occupational and physical therapist on hand. Also, Abeles, who is the co-director of the center.

“We know that there's basically five types of long COVID," said Abeles. "The most common ones we're seeing are the neurologic with the brain fog, the dizziness, the fatigue.”

Then there’s cardiac, pulmonary and physical symptoms.

“It's across the gamut," Abeles said. "There's no if you have this; you have long COVID. Our goal is really to identify why people have long COVID. Make sure people know that long COVID exists so that they can realize that there is something out there that they can ask for help with and then ultimately work with our community as well as the entire country to figure out how to treat long COVID because this is something everybody is dealing with.”

You don’t need insurance to get help, thanks to a grant from Mother Cabrini. After the initial assessment, patients return every three months.

“To make sure that there's improvement or pivoting if they need something else,” Abeles said.

The first step is reaching out for help. Lopez hopes sharing her struggles will inspire others to do just that. She also has two messages for those not suffering from long COVID. If a person has long COVID they aren’t contagious.

“If we all just were compassionate to each other and just being in front of another human and saying, ‘what might you need today? How can I help you and how can you help me?’" Lopez said. "And just sitting with that and just, you know, acknowledging that we're all in different places and what that might look like."

To schedule an appointment, contact Trudy at (716) 323-0674, and register on the long COVID registry.