I realized that my job was to get better and getting better is found in compliance rather than opposition. I did everything the medical staff asked me to do as best as I could do it and it appears to have paid off. I am now back home.
On Wednesday, November 11, I went to my office and before opening, as is my practice in this COVID-crazy world, I took my temperature. This is something I do everyday and I take “proper’ precautions when seeing clients in my office. I have them fill out an affidavit stating that they have not been exposed, take their temperature and try and practice social distancing. In other words, I try and take all the precautions; I don’t want to catch COVID-19. On that fateful Wednesday, as a looked at the thermometer, I was in for a surprise. The first reading was 100.3. When I took it again it was 99.5. I packed up my stuff, locked the door behind me and went home.
It was at that time the symptoms began to worsen and I knew I was in trouble. I scheduled a COVID-19 test for the next day and by the time the results came back positive, I was already fairly positive that somehow I had COVID-19. It was not long before my oxygen levels were falling and I ended up in the hospital on November 17. I was released today, November 24. I was there for exactly a week.
There are a couple of things to say about this. First, thanks to a persistent wife who is a retired Family Nurse Practitioner and her daughter who is an ER Nurse in a COVID unit in Cheyenne, WY there was little delay between becoming symptomatic and going to the hospital. This was an essential part of my treatment and we were able to begin treating the disease early before the symptoms had become too extreme. Second, the staff, nurses and medial doctors at that hospital were amazing. They were kind, compassionate, instructive and very hard working. They literally fought for my life. To all of these people, my words cannot convey the depth of my gratitude and respect. Their expertise, competence care did truly nurse me back to health. Finally, I realized that my job was to get better and getting better is found in compliance rather than opposition. I did everything they asked me to do as best as I could do it and it appears to have paid off. I am now back home.
A fight with COVID-19 is a very strange process for always hanging back in the recesses of your mind is the thought that this virus could kill me. If so, I may never see my wife and loved ones again. I did not give this thought much space in my thinking. Rather I concentrated on what i need to do to get better, bur still, the thought was there and it was frightening. It is a fight that is exhausting for the virus promises to exhaust your energy reserves making it sometimes difficult to focus energy on getting better, so you sleep…a lot. As a way of reflecting on this experience, the next few blogs will represent an overview of my experience and the thoughts I had. I hope they provide some insight but most of all, I hope they are taken as a warning. COVID-19 is nothing to take lightly, and it can kill, maim, and permanently scar you even if you survive. It is indeed frightening stuff and we should exercise extreme caution in an effort to avoid it.
A Window of Hope Counseling Center 