Covid 2

  When I prayed about Covid a few weeks ago, I had a foreboding feeling. And then I forgot it. 

      Mid-December as I had a reunion kind of lunch date with Dad at the local pizza and bakery and made up for lost time talking over four hours, I thought I was losing my voice over sheer, raw conversation. But within 24 hours, I had no voice whatsoever. Never happened before. I really didn't think much of it; it was almost funny. Besides, Macklynn had come down with something he couldn't kick. I couldn't keep his fever down, and there was a lot of neck and head pain, which had me thinking back on when he was a 4- year-old quadriplegic because of both encephalitis and meningitis. I was so concerned I even stopped by the church to ask them to pray. Something gave because he was better the next day. 

      And in the middle of all this Mike mysteriously hurt his back. While he was on the mend, I was on the move. I had purposefully waited on a particular sum to buy Christmas for Macklynn and Madalynn just days before Christmas. They were mostly common household items but very welcome to kids to who don't get new things very often. When he washed and got them on, Macklynn said he thought he'd never had new sheets before. 

     I also ran around for me like some kind of free agent with the $300 I'd been given. Merry Christmas to me, until Christmas Day that is. I was still coughing up whatever caused the laryngitis when we were exposed to Covid. The only one of our older kids who hadn't tested positive had begun to think she was immune since she, in her line of work, has had something like 2 dozen tests. By Monday night, I was coughing with headache, eye pain, and fever. The next day Madalynn (who hasn't tested positive before either) started but not so much with the cough. The boys (who have had positive cases) had the cough but no fever. And eventually Mike, who has had two shots and one booster, tested positive. 

     I went to Urgent Care to get tested Thursday just to appease everyone, and although I had been coughing violently, was actually beginning to feel better and was still making light of Covid. My rapid test was positive. Friday, I took a dive. And perimenopause or not, I started my period two weeks early which has never happened, and it was the heaviest and longest I've had in decades. Saturday, I got worse. I just couldn't catch my breath. 

     In the wee hours of Sunday morning, Mike took me to the ER here in town. Although my oxygen saturation levels were good, 97%, I felt bad. Bloodwork revealed that my cell counts were bottomed out, especially my white ones - marked LowLow, while my d dimers (sloughed off blood clot proteins) were triple what they should have been. They did a CT to rule out a pulmonary embolism, with it did. But it revealed bilateral Covid pneumonia. They called in a steroid, an emergency inhaler, and Tessalon Perles for cough and sent me home since my O2 was promising. 

     I got in Mike's hospital bed, where I could sleep sitting up, at 5:30 am and woke up soaking wet from the broken fever when one of the kids called to check on me at 8:30 am. I felt pretty good and texted everyone to tell them so.

     But Monday started a new decline. And the days started to wash together. It wasn't long before all I could do during the days was lie on my stomach on Mike's oxygen and concentrate on breathing and sit up at night only falling asleep when I couldn't help it. It was too scary to go to sleep on purpose. I basically only ate when I had to take the steroid. I kept taking all the vitamins and supplements, though. I also went outside in the mornings to let the dogs out of the barn and strolled a little in the sunshine, not understanding that the cold air was making my pneumonia worse, not better.  

     Madalynn was getting better; I was not. Michael got back from his move to Athens, GA. On the way there, he had reminded me that he talked on the phone to his O-line, who said he was doing better from Covid, the night before they found him dead. After checking my O2 on his Smartwatch, he quickly decided to go find me a pulse oximeter to doublecheck. At first the numbers were decent, between 94 and 97. And unbeknownst to anyone Friday morning, I got up and took myself for follow-up bloodwork. Then, I decided I needed a few things from the store, namely Kefir and Kombucha. I had discovered white splotches all inside my mouth: in my cheeks, on my gum line, on my tonsils, on my epiglottis, in my throat and was convinced it was yeast from the nebulizer and inhalers. But according to my second teledoc appointment, it was sloughing dead tissue instead. She said that's what the virus does and that's what my lungs were doing. I soon realized I had made a huge mistake in taking myself to town. I could barely stay between the lines on the way home. I didn't turn on the radio just so I could focus on staying straight. Ironically, my bloodwork turned out to be better. 

      All the monoclonal antibody infusion clinics had closed. My good friend was having lunch with someone who knew a nurse who was traveling to homes doing them. I got on her list, but she couldn't come before Saturday, which was day 13 for me. I didn't know which one she had, and I felt so bad Saturday morning that I didn't care. It went very smoothly. Mike and Madalynn even got one. But four hours later, I was not okay. I could not catch my breath even with the oxygen on. And the pulse ox wouldn't go above the low 90s. I have no other way to put it except that I felt like I was actually going to die. I had one more teledoc appointment in which the doctor would not prescribe anything but the Emergency Department. 

      Mike had gone to the store. I called him to come back. When he got here, I got on my knees beside the bed, and he said I felt cold. I checked my temp on two oral thermometers. One was 94.6. The other was 94.9. He didn't tell me then, but when he shined the light in my eyes to see if they were dilated, my corneas had turned milky. It's called "eye clouding"  and can be from a handful of things, and none of them are good. He said when he did rescue and later when he was on the road and stopped for accidents, it's what the eyes of people dying people looked like. 

     He took me out of town where all his heart procedures have been done and where we know the specialists. He dropped me off at the ED entrance. The guard caught me to ask if I had any weapons, and although I had thought to leave my gun at home and to put underwear and socks and phone cord in my purse, I still had my pepper spray. I forgot about my knife altogether. And apparently, the effort to find the pepper spray was my breaking point. I got weepy, more breathless, and they hurried for a wheelchair while I held onto the metal detector. 

     Thankfully, they took me very seriously and straight to triage, then to a decontamination shower room because they just didn't have anywhere else to put me. Once I got an exam room, my oxygen was down to 89 before they put me on oxygen. They did bloodwork directly and sent for another CT with contrast after they got my lab results. I didn't know until today that my d dimer (blot clot markers) were six times as high as they should have been, doubled from the last week. No pulmonary embolisms were detected, though, only that I still had pneumonia. My alveoli sacs were either flattening or filling with fluid all throughout my lungs. They said it was moderate. I guess I would have just plain died if it had been severe. And that's what they say happens: people wait too long to get help, and then it's too late. 

      Sometime in the night, they wheeled me into a room on the fifth floor and started intravenous steroids and the antiviral drug, Remdesivir, which they are only giving to patients admitted into hospitals. I received some pretty stout warnings from well-intended sources about the use of Remdesivir, but when you believe you're going to die, you're taking what they're giving. Plus, my nurse who has been there for all of Covid has not seen or heard of one case of renal failure from the drug. 

     I don't remember much of Sunday except that it was so foggy outside, and I couldn't see the horizon. Or Monday, only that I had to have it completely quiet, not because pain but out of the need to hear God and for Him to hear me, no television, no phone, no radio, no calls, only sporadic text updates. This is the kind of sick where you don't brush your hair, you don't wash your face, you don't care if you never went that long without a bra before, you don't care if only one string is tied on the back of your gown, you don't brush your teeth, and you don't care if you ever shave again.