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PUEBLO, Colo. (KDVR) — Jalyn Tenorio still feels tingles in her hand. The 20-year-old from Pueblo is recovering from COVID and a stroke.

She was in New Mexico with a friend when the symptoms set in. “My arm curled up and my right side was paralyzed, like I couldn’t even walk,” she said.

Tenorio doesn’t remember much, but says she was taken to the emergency room at University of New Mexico Hospital where she got the diagnosis.

“They saw that I had COVID, and then they saw I had a clot in my brain which caused the stroke. So, it’s pretty crazy,” she said. 

“She was clinically very profoundly affected,” Dr. Christian Bowers at UNMH said. “With that inflammation you can get clots that form, which is serious. She had clotting of some of the deep internal veins within the brain,” he said.

Bowers said young people are less likely to become severely ill from COVID, but it can happen, and there is no way to predict who it will happen to.

“Imagine you are a 20-year-old person, and you get COVID, you hear that COVID is not a big deal, and it isn’t for a lot of people, but there are young people that die from this. There are young people that have severe, permanent neurological deficits,” Bowers said.

Tenorio spent two weeks in the hospital and is now recovering at home in Colorado. She’s receiving physical therapy and says she will need speech therapy.

“I’m slowly getting better,” she said.

She wants other young people to know that COVID is a serious thing, and to continue taking precautions.

“Just be aware of it, and be safer,” she said.