‘This virus can be beat’: Coronavirus survivor stories

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Unknown: I was told that people that, you know, are put on ventilators only have a 20% chance of getting off of them. And that was very scary. The odd thing is I didn’t show signs at all. I had no clue that I was sick. And told her that I had about a 20% chance of living. I went to the hospital a couple days after my birthday. And the next thing I look at, they’re talking about I’m getting ready to die. One day I’m well. The next day I was sick. This woman contacted us and she just said, ‘You have to come out and see this man. Over 100 people are going to gather outside his house.’ Because he just three days ago returned home from the hospital from a vicious long battle with COVID-19. It’s a secret. So he don’t have a clue. We knew it was going to be very emotional just after speaking with her because you could tell she had been through so much. You know, your husband is in the hospital and you can’t see him. You can barely talk to him. He’s on a ventilator. He had to be in on a ventilator. And then they had put him in a coma. a medically induced coma. And the people closest to him could not be at his bedside. It’s been kind of nerve-wracking, espec ally when they told me that he w s Which made that day of everybody gathering to his house all the more special and miraculous, really, because nobody thought that would happen. He’s helpful. He’s caring, he’s loving and I have known him for 50 plus years. We’re just coming out here to try to support him. Let him know that he has a lot of love. He I think was In a little bit of disbelief, seeing all the cars in front of him and the fact that he made it out alive, the fact that he was able to sit there and see over 100 friends in front of him was an amazing moment. I just want everyone to protect themselves, protect their children, and do what you’ve got to do to stay alive. It was amazing talking to Bud. I mean, as you know, in the news, we have to cover a lot of sad things with COVID-19. A lot of tragedies, a lot of the unknowns that go with this illness, and focusing on something like this, on a huge success story of someone who was so loved, someone that was able to rally over 100 people to go see him after his recovery process. Like that is what people want to see. That’s inspirational. I felt like somebody was grabbing my lungs with their nails and just ‘I need you to put this mask on.’ They said, ‘You have squeezing them so tight. The pain, it just felt like stabbing pain in my lungs. I had met Jolene Griffin. She’s a really active person. She tells me on a Sunday morning she went out and she just went for a jog. When she came back and started making breakfast for her two kids, all of a sudden she got a really big bilateral pneumonia, which is a sign of COVID.’ And I said, ‘How pain near her abdomen. And initially, she thought maybe it was something with her appendix. And she was taken to the hospital. She said she was doubling over in pain. They ran a whole bunch of tests, and a whole bunch of blood tests and when nothing came to fruition with those tests, she was then tested for COVID-19 and that’s how she was diagnosed. I came back and they were in full gear. They said the heck can I, I have no symptoms. I don’t have a fever. I just went for a run. How did I get this?’ And they’re like, ‘We don’t know.’ She was taken to the hospital and immediately put into quarantine once the blood test results came back. But she said the first three days she didn’t actually feel anything because they had caught the COVID-19 so early on, she still wasn’t necessarily feeling sick, but she knew itwas coming. So they had prepared ventilators for her. They had prepared everything and started putting her on medication she said about three days in was when it really started to hit her. We’ve heard from so many doctors that most of the people who are diagnosed with COVID-19 are asymptomatic and she may have fallen into that category, at least for those period of two or three days. But ultimately, even she had a lot of the common symptoms that we’ve all been hearing about. About five days after she was initially admitted to the hospital, she finally started to see the light at the end of the tunnel. That Saturday, unfortunately, it was her birthday. So she became one of so many patients that had to be in quarantine for her birthday, this time at a hospital. She said the nurses and the doctors were all trying to give her balloons and get her in the birthday spirit, but obviously, it wasn’t the same. It’s not fun being in the hospital bed. Begging the nurse to turn up the oxygen. And she says it’s up all the way. It’s begging for them to I honestly wish it would have taken it a lot seriously, wore a help you breathe. It’s not fun. About a day after she was released from the hospital, she told me that her plan was immediately to get better. When she was released from the hospital, she still wasn’t 100% better. It was just to the point mask, wore gloves than just quarantine. You haveto do so now where doctors felt comfortable releasing her and she was going to be quarantining herself at home, but her plan was always to donate convalescent plasma which we’ve been hearing about. So, actually the most recent update is that she will be donating plasma this week. She had to wait until May much more for yourself. So much more to protect your family. 2 to be cleared. And she will be trying to help other people who are currently fighting COVID-19 That was really important t her One thing across the board I’ve heard, but she in particular, had told me that the hardest part of trying to fight COVID-19 was the fact that she was completely and totally alone. It’s the worst feeling in the world when people treat you like you got like the Bubonic plague. She had a whole network of family behind her. And I think she understood that mentally, but not being able to see them every day, being stuck in a hospital with just four walls around her, and only doctors and nurses allowed in the room, she said took such a heavy mental and emotional toll on her. But it was almost equal to if not worse, her battle with COVID-19 I can’t explain my gratitude, because my kids mean the world to me and I, I couldn’t imagine not being their mom. This whole thing just seems to be crazy. Like nobody knows what it’s gonna do or how it’s gonna affect someone. Danny Lemos is a 39-year-old man with no underlying health conditions. I got home from work and I was feeling really like congested in the chest. And I checked my temperature and I had a slight temperature. Next thing I know was I’m waking up in Omaha. Was hospitalized out in Grand Island and then deteriorated enough that they flew him by helicopter to a hospital here in Omaha. And he doesn’t remember any of that, said that he was essentially unconscious. He actually thinks he got this from his dad who works at a meat plant out in Grand Island. They’ve had a lot of cases in some of those meatpacking plants. So his dad was hospitalized. His mom got sick and was not hospitalized. Doctors asked the power of attorney if they could give Danny remdesivir, this experimental drug. And Danny says the power of attorney gave permission. So he started getting doses and describes, you know, a couple days into that treatment, that trial ,that he had to sort of miraculous recovery. I could see myself reach up, but it took every bit of strength I possibly had. And I rip my vent out of my mouth. This remdesivir trial involves patients that were given remdesivir and patients that were given the placebo. Danny Lemos was brought here in a coma and, you know, believes that he was given remdesivir and really credits it was saving his life. Thinks that that was what allowed him to turn around pretty quickly after arriving in Omaha. I really think it was a game changer. I really do. Everyone’s like, You’re the talk of the hospital, like nobody can understand how you’ve turned around so quickly.’ What we understand from doctors locally and nationally is that as states are beginning to reopen, of course, we don’t have a vaccine, but having at least some treatment options that can reduce fatalities and get people out of the hospital faster is going to be very important. When he returned home back to Grand Island, he was surprised by the number of people that were out and about and felt like people weren’t really taking steps to protect themselves. So I think that was his biggest message, is to really take this seriously. It’s just nuts around here, like people literally walk around this town like there’s nothing going on. Stay home. Don’t go out unless you have to. We have to get this under control. I didn’t really believe in it. I didn’t think it was, you know, anything to worry about necessarily. So Billy Schultz is 27 years old. He is a truck driver from the Wisconsin area. He initially was not really thinking that coronavirus is too much of a threat, at least for him. As truck drivers, we don’t really get PPE. You know, that doesn’t really exist in our line of work. Then he got sick, and it happened according to Billy and his family very quickly. His mom had reached out because now their family was just devastated. They didn’t know what was going on. I was in the ER at 4:00. By 5:00 I was in the intensive care unit. And by 8:00 I was heavily sedated on a ventilator. They weren’t able to physically be there with him through the process, hold his hand, tell him it’s gonna be okay, things like that. So they wanted to find a way to show support and come together. They organized a bit of a parade of trucks. During that parade, they got the call that they’ve been, you know, hoping that he actually got off the ventilator. He said that when he saw the story that our photojournalist did about his parade, he saw it and he cried, you know, because obviously he wasn’t awake, he was on a ventilator when that was happening. And just knowing that people are there rooting for you, he really feels like that is just that could be life changing. I did receive a, a plasma transfusion from a, a prior COVID-19 patient to help fight this and to help battle this. He was really pushing for just, you know, reminding people, they don’t have to be alone and he wants to be there to support them throughout the process. And of course, if you do survive, he was advocating for being a donor, because he really believes that that’s part of his life and got him off the ventilator. To let people know that this virus can be beat, and I wanted to spread hope to other people that they can beat it as well.