itsnotjusttheflu

We lost my brother due to Covid-19

By R

Hello to all going through this same trauma. I have no real point to writing this post except to vent.

My 51 year old brother was admitted to the hospital with the usual Covid symptoms. He seemed OK when he was there and it looked as though he just needed a little help beating this thing. He did not have any pre existing conditions.

His 02 levels were OK at the beginning, then they went down to 52 percent, The doctors were able to get it back up to 65, but then he coded (heart stopped). They intubated him and apparently got his heart started again briefly, but it did not last and he passed away.

This post really won't accomplish anything for me personally, but I will pass on a little bit of advice. If you are a Black person as I am, Please take some Vitamin D supplements. It's been proven to help the immune system fight against respiratory diseases. Black people DO NOT generate enough vitamin D in many cases. It's strictly due to the melanin in the skin, etc.

Encourage people to stay home, the social distancing needs to happen. I don't want any of you to feel the pain our family is going through now.

Don't wait to go to the hospital if you are sick, please. I think my brother waited too long to go in.

Love your families, Love your friends, and look out for each other.

About

There is value in telling these stories- It is frustrating to watch our society struggle so hard to reach a consensus on how best to handle this public-health crisis. Our hope is that by sharing as many first-hand experiences and stories as possible, we can help to humanize the impact of Covid-19 (which is increasingly discussed in numbers, trends, rolling averages, and generalities) by writing about it. By reading about it and by amplifying the experiences of one another.

Reading about something that someone (even a stranger) went through, in their own words, carries a gravity that gets lost when translated into news blurbs and sound bites.

The goal of this project is to provide a platform for people to write and share a description of their experiences with Covid-19 in a way that is both accessible to anyone, and respectful of the privacy of those sharing their experiences.

But what does that mean?

That means that this site: *Will never share your information *Will never sell or host advertisements *Will never log the IP addresses of our visitors *Will never track you after you leave our site

Thanks,

Adam

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Thursday morning June 18 my wife woke up around 5 am and told me she is really sick.

By Roy

We got up and at around noon I started coughing and I called the doctor and asked for a Z-pak. They told me they need me to be checked out since it’s been a while since I used one of those. They were able to see me that afternoon and told me I had a fever. I told them I feel great and I don’t think I have a fever at all. They decided to test me and then over the weekend they called me and said I’m positive for covid19. My wife tested and she was positive as well.

My coughing started getting worse and by first of the week at times I had trouble talking due to not having enough air capacity. We contemplated going to ER but then it got a little better. (I’m not one to run to the dr quickly). Tuesday night I woke up with another severe coughing situation around 4:30-5:00 so i got up and went to the kitchen and made a hot tea to try and soothe my throat. My wife was awakened by a loud thud in the dining room. She came out quickly to find me passed out on the floor. The children came out as well. I woke up laying on the hardwood floor as she called 911. I sat up and hadn’t known what happened. EMS came and they took me to the hospital. They put an oxygen mask on me and that seemed to help me.

Upon entering the hospital they did tests and decided to keep me as they admitted me. Hard part was my wife was not allowed in to be with me. The first days were spent on oxygen with all kinds of tests to the organs of the body. They then put me in ICU so they can monitor high volume oxygen pressured into my lungs in an effort to get them to open for healing. They used a CPAP machine And put a Tight face mask on me and set It at 65 and pushed oxygen into my lungs in an effort to get them to open up along with steroids. I couldn’t quite handle that face mask As it made me anxious wearing it at night while i slept. The nurse gave me some anxiety medication to calm me down and that helped. The doc explained that if this doesn’t work they would have to intubate me and put me on a ventilator. I resisted hard based on what I had read and they keep trying and all at once the oxygen saturation started to stay up around 95% as they started to turn down the oxygen. I asked for hydroxychloroquine but the Dr didn’t think it would help in my condition and then I asked for remdesivir And he gave me the same response and said they were having a better response to Covid with steroids. After about a week they told me i was improving to where they are planning to put me in step down with reduced oxygen.

My wife was told by the ICU nurse that the Pulmonologist is a bit more conservative and is willing to have patience instead of resorting to intubation quickly. I think this helped me a lot. So with heavy doses of steroids and oxygen they were able to keep me going. I kept improving to the point that my levels stayed above 92% while on very low oxygen and so they send me home. I was in the hospital for almost 14 days and had lost almost 40#.

They send me home with oxygen and have been on 4 liters 24/7. Breathing while sitting is no problem but walking slowly from the sofa to the bathroom is tough. My oxygen saturation will go from 95 to 82 in a hurry. I’ve been home now for 2 weeks and i think i might have a slight improvement in breathing. Recovery has been very slow. I was hoping for the lungs to improve more rapidly but it seems like snail recovery. I have a very healthy appetite and feel great but am hindered greatly by shortness of breath. I still have some coughing but it’s manageable.

Of course my biggest question is how long till I can breath normally. I have gotten a pretty ugly COVID rash on my leg and chest. It’s nasty and itchy. Tomorrow I have an appointment with my pulmonologist.

Me and my soon-to-be-wife have not been affected by the illness itself;

By Michał H.

Either our bodies have not yet encountered it or it has gone through them without any signs. The lockdown has been rather wearing us out though; if it hadn't been for the fact that both of us are introverted, we would have landed in a much worse mental state than before.

I consider ourselves lucky because of that: my programming work was capable of becoming fully remote in an instance, I have had a chance to write my first ever programming book, and my significant other has been able to rest and watch a lot of movies and TV series that she'd recently fallen in love with.