Nearly 1 million Ohioans have been diagnosed with COVID-19.
Stories abound of 95-year-olds beating it, others enduring long hospital stays, and younger professionals getting through it without much trouble.
Add me, thankfully, to the survivors. It's rare perspective for me as a journalist to be gripped so personally by such a news event. The last time was sweating out the lottery draft at the end of the war in Vietnam.
This time, the news came in an email from the Cleveland Clinic at 9 a.m. Dec. 10, which gave me the word in boldface capital letters. I had tested POSITIVE for COVID-19.
The test was an afterthought. An online doc had advised that a test was not needed as there had already been a few weeks of hacking and huffing, and I'd already exposed others in our quarantine.
That advice was put aside as my wife needed a test for a different reason. (She also tested positive but fared better.) I needed stronger meds anyway, and a Cleveland Clinic online doctor properly recommended I also get tested. So, we managed to get them together.
As an asthma sufferer, it had seemed a typical cough. At the outset, it was nothing out of the ordinary. However, thanks to advice from Elizabeth McIntyre, my boss and executive editor of Crain's Cleveland, to get it checked out quickly, I did. Bronchitis was the diagnosis, something very familiar. Continued decline with antibiotics was not.
It became the most brutal bronchitis bout of my life. Shortness of breath would get new meaning.
My lungs became so plugged up, I felt there was less than an inch of lung capacity. For more than two weeks, it felt as if a very plump water balloon had settled in my chest. There was also bout after bout of chills.
Those weeks were mostly in bed, asleep for most of the day.
The turning point came when I wanted to watch a little TV — and cared about eating.
The next surprise came after taking a short walk or the stairs. I had to sit down to recover. I did not have the shooting pain of pneumonia, which I know firsthand. In my judgment, overall, COVID-19 felt far worse. Even so, I am glad that I was spared pneumonia a second time.
Throughout, we debated my going to the hospital. No docs told me to do so. Even though I was in an impaired state, things around the house kept me there. Others, I am sure, needed hospital care more than me.
For about two weeks, there were several nights that I wondered about calling paramedics to go to the emergency room. A few nights, I felt, might be my last. As I turned off the bedroom light several nights, I made mental goodbyes.
As soon as the first cough had surfaced, my wife quarantined me from herself and our adult daughter who lives with us. Luckily, our daughter never caught it. My recovery was slow. Being able to sit up and read — that was progress. However, it was weeks before our dog got a decent walk.
How we got the virus remains uncertain. Masks for public trips, followed by showers and clothes changes after any emergency trip to a public place, had been our standard practice since the pandemic's inception. Getting the virus undercut all those efforts. Yet staving off infection was worthwhile.
The downside to sharing my personal story is that so many have suffered so much more.
The toll in terms of lost income and failed businesses around us is huge. That pales compared to the losses reflected in the unbelievable death count in the U.S. and the grief of the survivors.
More illustrative of this crisis are the images reflecting its magnitude. Refrigerator trucks as morgues. Caskets lining the floor of a mortuary in Italy. Aerial video of a cemetery in Brazil with caskets aligned on burial plots, awaiting interment.
In my case, months later, each day continues to be better than its predecessor.
I've gotten the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. The second is scheduled for early April. Worries about variants and a second round may be assuaged.
In an unexpected way, my struggle has been helpful to others.
Any relatives who learned of my COVID-19 encounter shed earlier qualms they voiced about the vaccine. They got the shot.
Bullard covers real estate for Crain’s Cleveland Business.
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March 21, 2021 at 03:00PM
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From the real estate beat: COVID-19, up too close and personal - Crain's Cleveland Business
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