Nearly 40 days on a ventilator. A tracheotomy. Forty-five pounds lost. Countless hours of physiotherapy.

And now, post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and flashbacks.

COVID-19 ravaged Paul Hemsing’s body and left him with deep physical and emotional scars.

“Frightening, exhausting, scary,” he recalled, struggling to put words to his trauma. “The fear of whether you were going to survive or not or whether you are going to see your loved ones again.”

Hemsing — who owns a hair salon in Medicine Hat, Alta., with his husband — went to the gym three or four times a week and was otherwise healthy. The 51-year-old scrambled to get