this is "nightline." >> tonight, hope for the long haulers? covid survivors suffering for months, no end to their misery. >> i couldn't drive because i had such bad brain fog. >> now on a road to recovery. is there a link to vaccine? >> there are so many people suffering, we don't have any time to waste. plus, fight, grind, repeat. bobby bones, the radio star, taking a beating on his new show. >> oh god, my body is trembling. oh my god. >> telling stories of grit and determination. and trying not to get killed. far from home. the wandering elephants making it in the big city. ♪ every bubble ♪

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♪ thanks for joining us. tonight, you may have heard their stories. you may know a so-called covid long hauler or you may be one. it's estimated the 10 million americans who have had even mild cases experience symptoms for months at a time. there's a lot we don't know about this virus, including why now some people are finally getting better.

here's abc's janai norman. >> i'd never felt fatigue like i have experienced post-covid. >> reporter: for most of her life, julie, a yoga teacher, avid runner, and mom of three, has been the picture of health. until january when her whole family came down with covid. >> as an athlete and someone who's always used their body, getting sick or being injured is always kind of a bad thing. >> reporter: she had debilitating symptoms for weeks. >> my body felt so heavy, i could barely walk up the steps. >> what were some of the other symptoms you were dealing with? >> i had something called frostbite. apparently it's a real thing. the top of my head, the tip of my fingers, tip of my nose, tips of my toes, were freezing. >> reporter: with the rest of the family recovered, julie ace symptoms persisted for months. she became what's called a covid long hauler. >> i couldn't drive, i had such

bad brain fog that i felt medicated all the time even though i wasn't taking anything. >> what was it like for you to have brain fog? >> brain fog feels like your brain is swiss cheese. your brain is super cloudy. having a conversation like we're having now would have been very difficult, because i would lose my train of thought. >> reporter: after she got her second dose of the pfizer vaccine, julie says she noticed a change. >> i have so much more energy. i'm sleeping better. i have less brain fog. i have less overall fatigue in my body. >> you think that feeling better is tied to the vaccine? >> i do. something is in the vaccine that created a sense of feeling better. i don't know if it's mental or if it's actually physical. i'd be interested to find out. >> reporter: now researchers are working to understand why some people with long-term symptoms say they improve after being vaccinated. >> long hauler symptoms are very prevalent. there are probably long haulers that are in the u.s. in the millions.

who are, you know, just starting to be recognized. >> reporter: dr. kiko awasaki and her team at yale university are working on a study about the vaccine's effect on those still experiencing lingering symptoms. >> the underlying disease process that causes the long haul symptoms is still not understood. unfortunately, there is nothing that's proven to work to treat the long hauler disease. >> reporter: but according to a survey done by survivor corps, an organization supporting covid-19 survivors, 40% of long haulers report feeling better after the vaccine. that evidence is only self-reported and scientific studies to answer the question of why are still ongoing. she's testing multiple theories. >> two theories. one is persistent infection can be removed by the immune responses generated by the vaccines. the other possibility is the vaccine is inducing factors like

si psytokines that bind to the cells and dampen their effect so they're no longer attackinging our cells and making us feel sick. >> the fact that some people are feeling better, so many people are feeling better, it offers us an incredible clue. it's like a bread column trail to find an actual therapeutic that will help people. there are so many people suffering, we don't have any time to waste. >> reporter: diana contracted covid in march of 2020. >> are you taking any medications on a daily basis? >> no. >> reporter: at a time the virus was incredibly new. >> the road to recovery is not necessarily a straight line, it's kind of like one step forward, one step back. >> reporter: diana started posting video diaries of her experience to educate others as she isolated. >> while i was in isolation for those 18 days, i realized that physical going to be one of the first survivors, that i had a

moral and civic duty to coalesce all of the other survivors, to mobilize an army of survivors to contribute to science. >> reporter: the group now has almost 170,000 members, many of them covid long haulers. >> we have college athletes who are in wheelchairs. we have musicians who have lost their sense of hearing. we have people who cannot go back to work, they cannot go back to their daily lives. they are truly suffering. and they need help. >> reporter: while exactly how and why the vaccine helps some people with long-term covid symptoms is still a medical mystery, people like heidi garza are celebrating that they are finally feeling better. heidi almost died from covid in april 2020. she spent nine days in the icu. >> it was a nightmare. i can't believe that i'm here right now. i had blood clots. >> wow. >> it was so hard for them to treat me with the right thing,

because they didn't have enough information. >> reporter: in the eight months that followed, she continued to suffer, even losing about 50% of her hair. >> sometimes, in some moments, you feel hopeless. the fact that -- go to the stairs, to the second floor. that was the biggest thing that i can do in a couple of months. >> reporter: heidi makes a living as a zumba instructor, but for months she could only dance for about 15 minutes. >> i had to use the inhaler almost every other song. it was sad to see myself, the way that i was looking, because i don't remember the time, i don't remember the steps. >> reporter: she says she'd be bedridden the whole next day. >> it was the most terrible thing, because it it was, when am i going to be okay? when am i going to feel normal again? >> reporter: as soon as she was eligible for the vaccine, she jumped at the chance. how did you feel after the

second dose? >> good. after that, everything fine. back to my activities. >> reporter: although she says she's not 100%, she is now teaching zumba three days in a row, a huge step forward. >> i'm here. i'm alive. and it could be a different story. >> reporter: heidi recovering, but many long haulers have had little relief. >> i was healthy, i'm strong, i eat well, i don't have pre-existing conditions. but look at me, six months and i'm still experiencing symptoms. >> i'm done with this i'm over with it. somebody come up with a solutn or treatment or whatever so i can get back to my normal life. >> at first, i couldn't walk. i didn't have the use of the left side of my body. i had a lot of intensive therapy that i had to go through. >> reporter: danielle jordan, don seedhole, heather elizabeth brown, are all covid long haulers. abc news has been following

their battle for months. >> there were two points when i realized in my recovery that i was going to have some long haul symptoms. i think the first point was when the doctors and the experts were telling me, and then the second point was when i kind of -- it kind of sunk in and i realized it myself. >> everything is bad. it's hard to eat. i'm losing weight. it's just -- everything tastes bad and smells bad. so i forget to eat. i don't get as hungry anymore. and then my body suffers the consequences of that. >> and then brain fog. which you know, is probably the most troubling of all the symptoms, just because, you know, you're sitting there in a train of thought, all of a sudden you're just lost. >> reporter: we reached out again to see if they'd been vaccinated, and while all said they had, none of them had experienced much of a change in their symptoms. they hope that with more research, a cure or treatment will become available. >> i have really good days and

really bad days. i'm used to going 24/7. and i don't feel like that. >> this is a huge problem going forward. even after we control the spread of the virus with the vaccine, we still have millions of people who are going to be suffering from long covid. we need to find out the cause, and we need to figure out a therapy. >> reporter: less than a month after her second dose of the vaccine, julie is fighting to reclaim the ground she'd lost. what's your message to anyone still dealing with these symptoms? >> hang in there, i think. get your vaccine. i think that it's helpful. people are having great results, feeling better. try your best to keep a positive mindset. it's so hard when you're down t fily be timiic. >> our thanks to janai for that report. coming up, bobby bones, a

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♪ it's not easy to describe what bobby bones does in a new tv show, let alone explain why. the famed radio host goes to great heights and literally death-defying challenges. abc's erielle reshef recently caught up with bobby. >> reporter: bobby bones is taking a beating. literally putting his life on the line. traveling to far-flung places around the country, seeking out people in unique circumstances.

this self-deprecating star of country music radio, mentor on "american idol," former "dancing with the stars" champion, has a new gig -- a show called "breaking bobby bones." it airs on national geographic, owned by disney, the parent company of abc news. where did you come up with the name "breaking bobby bones"? why that concept for the show? >> people will come for the hook. the hook is, watch if i die, watch if i get hurt, watch if i quit. if they come for the flash, maybe they'll stay for th stories and heart and perseverance and be inspired, be motivated by these different ro orter: ies like lonidwels.t the with a shotgun, he's blind, yet he inspires by climbing mountains,yaking. >> i managed to stay straight until -- oh my god -- this happens.

bobby! >> it started with finding folks who had been through a lot of adversity. me in my life, i've been through a ton, really rough childhood. when i wanted to travel around and find their stories and showcase them, turned out a lot of them had extremely interesting lives or hobbies or skills. and so i was like, well, why don't i also try what they're doing? i was getting their story, i was also doing and showing how uncomfortable that i can be at the same time. but for me to get people to the story, i needed something like "break bobby bones." people to go, let's see what this idiot's up to. >> reporter: bobby wanted the show to focus on a slice of life not often captured on social media, celebrating unsung american heroes. >> i wanted to highlight a lot of people throughout middle america who kind of don't get the look because they're not in l.a. or new york. if you're not high flying, living the life, smiling, flexing your money, then you're not being seen. and so there are a lot of people who feel alone because they

don't feel like anyone relates to them. >> reporter: one of the roughest experiences, playing ice hockey on sleds. with ralph, a wounded veteran from denver, who was injured in afghanistan. >> he lost both of his legs serving our country. he came back, he didn't know what to do. he admits on the show with me that he was suicidal when he came back. he goes over, he's healthy. he comes back, he doesn't have legs anymore. what does he do, where does he find his life now? turns out there's something called sled hockey. and he's on the u.s. paralympic team now. he'd never played hockey in his life, but he learned how to play hockey through a video game, he trained, made the team, they want to go medal. i need america to see that story. i need america to know what he's been through, what they're going through, they're not alone. >> reporter: his empathy stems from his own troubled childhood. a story he shared with "nightline" two years ago. >> i come from a really small town of 700 people in mountain pine, arkansas. i grew up without a dad, my mom

was an addict who ended up dying in her 40s. i needed to break the cycle. from an early age i knew that i had to get an education and get out. first kid to graduate high school in my family. first to graduate college. i needed to get out to show others they could do it. >> reporter: his personal mantra made it to the cover of his second book. fight, grind, repeat. >> i needed words that i could go, this is it. the fight is identifying the goal. here's my fight, this is what i want to do. the grind is the hard work you have to put in every day even though no one's looking. there's no glory in the grind. repeat is, it doesn't work out the first time. when it doesn't work out, can you repeat and do it again? >> at one point you're dangling over the grand canyon. >> reporter: anyone scared of high places like bobby freely admits, the most terrifying moment comes here. >> my leg is shaking like crazy. i'm a little -- okay, i'm a lot scared. >> you got this. >> here we go. one, two -- oh -- oh-oh -- i

don't think -- oy,eaand t >> felt like something undid that shouldn't have undid. what is happening here? >> bobbi, stop right there. stop right there. >> whoa, whoa, what's going on? oh my god! >> what is going through your mind as someone who is afraid of heights? >> i hated it. i'm not going to sit and act like it was fun, it wasn't. i didn't sleep the night before. this guy, mike, he had been in prison, he had been in gangs, pretty much people had written him off. he had written himself off. but he had found something called rope access, another job i didn't know existed until this show. but what he does, he builds rope rigs and he goes to places that humans can't go with a crane or a drone, and he climbs up there. it just so happened when i met with him, he was underneath a skywalk of the grand canyon, which meant i had to hang 4,000 feet on a rope.

and there's one part of the show -- >> oh, god -- >> my leg is shaking so bad, you can see my foot not able to actually get a grip. that was tough. >> reporter: paying it forward is the underlying theme. >> marina, who moved to seattle to go to school and be a commercial diver. to be honest, i didn't know what that was. i thought you put on a snorkel, kick some fins and that's it. >> this is scary. >> make sure to breathe. >> so i go, i put on 100 pounds of equipment. they send me down to the sea floor. i'm doing construction. but finding her story where she took care of her mom before her mom died of cancer, she slept in her truck the last weeks of school so she could save up the money as she went to school to make the move to actually get a job. and so at the very end the episode -- >> reporter: actually, you're going to have to watch next week to find out what happens to marina. but given everything bobby has been through, you can bet it's going to be good.

>> i don't have some amazing skill or talent. i don't show up every day -- i control what i can control, my work ethic and attitude. if i don't have that, i have nothing. i've built a career and a life focusing on that. focusing on the things i can control. >> for someone who's been so successful at being in control, bobby's getting married later this year. we're just wondering if that control thing might slip a bit. "breaking bobby bones" airs on the did national geographic channel. up next, the elephants next door. nat. for people who are a little intense about hydration. up next, the elephants next door.

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♪ it's not every day you see a herd of elephants on your way to work. but that's exactly what's been happening in the chinese city of kanming, where more than 6 million people live, and now at least 14 elephants. they've been hanging out on the outskirts of the city for more than a month. they traveled over 300 miles from their forest home. authorities have fed the elephants tons of food but have had to evacuate some residents. ironic, given that they may have been displaced by humans. no one knows exactly why they

made the journey. that's "nightline." you can watch all of our full episodes on hulu. see you right back here same time tomorrow. thanks for staying up with us. good night, america.