CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) -This week marks the five year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring COVID 19 a pandemic.

Since then we've learned a lot about the lasting effects of a virus and long illness.

When Johnalynn Sinnett was just 12 years old she got sick, but she didn't bounce back like kids usually do.

Her bout with the flu morphed into a month long migraine.

This kicked off years of illness, pain and discomfortnd and countless visits to doctors.

"I had to go to the E.R. I got a migraine cocktail, some nausea medication, some pain medication," she recalls.

MRI's, medications, scans, bloodwork and tests followed. Nothing was helping and she and her mother weren't getting any answers.

It was negatively affecting all aspects of her life.

"When I started falling behind and I was no longer on that perfect attendance list and I no longer had straight A's, slowly but surely, the truancy officers were like, "Why aren't we in school?" she said.

Johnnalyn said she was scared, angry and frustrated that no one seemed to understand what was happening to her and some didn't believe she was really sick, and wanted to treat her for mental illness.

"Multiple doctors after tests came up negative or whatnot just were like, well, you're making it up," said Sinnett.

It wasn't until she was referred to doctor David Miller at U.H. Connor Whole Health, that she finally felt heard, and started to feel better. She was diagnosed with long-flu.

"When Johnalynn came in, really what what I heard was a constellation of symptoms that came on following flu within a confined time frame," said Dr. Miller.

He and the team at U.H. Connor Whole Health learned a lot from long-covid care, and says it unlocked their awareness to other post viral syndromes.

"We're starting to see much more awareness within the infection disease community, that you can get sick with something that seems like you had if for a little while and it's gone, but really it's not gone," he said.

Dr. Miller says other long-illness patients like Johnalynn have gone years suffering because their post viral symptoms like brain fog, fatigue, abdonimal pain and headaches were misdiagnosed.

"It's awful. It's no way to live," said Dr. Miller.

He believes part of the problem is that mainstream medicine is still so silo-organized.

"So each person sees their little piece of the elephant so to speak, but no one sees the elephant," Miller said.

COVID drummed up a lot of data, quickly, that helped doctors see what they'd been missing in other patients for decades.

At U.H. Connor Whole Health they're approaching this multi-system condition, holistically.

They're applying changes to diet, low dose medications, herbal remedies, probiotics, physical therapy and histamine management.

"There's a practice for energy management called pacing that comes out of the chronic fatigue syndrome community where people take preemptive rest through out their day, no naps, but little breaks and it can make a huge difference in how much battery a person has and whether they're having crashes and symptom flares," said Miller.

Johnalynn is confident she's got an accurate diagnosis and path for treatment. She's finally starting to feel better, and perhaps most comforting, she feels validated.

"You have to yell from the roof tops how you feel. And if a doctor doesn't listen to you, you have to go to the next," she said.