Because I've had to mention a few times that I'm quarantined for a bit, and I keep getting questions, I wanted to update everyone on what we've been going through this last week.
On Friday the 13th (yes) I woke up tired but I hadn't been sleeping well the whole week. I went to physical therapy as scheduled, and was just way more fatigued than I had been for a long time. I was struggling so much that my therapist stopped me about halfway through to check my blood pressure and heart rate, which were fine. I chalked it up to lack of sleep and exercise that week.
That afternoon I slowly kept turning the temperature in the house up warmer and warmer. Around dinner time I finally asked the kids if they were cold too. Sam looked at me like I was nuts. Crap. I had a fever. So did Milo and Caleb (who had been miserable all day). The next day, Caleb and I were still fevered, congested and tired. Milo ran a fever off and on too. Sunday was the same. But my fever got up to 101. Body aches, headache, chills, some congestion, a little bit of a dry cough, but I kept getting more and more short of breath. For several nights I couldn't sleep because I was just so uncomfortable. Monday the 16th it was so bad that I got winded just moving laundry from the washer to the dryer. I knew I needed to see someone.
By the time David got home from work, I had to go to an urgent care facility. I chose CareNow because they've treated our kids really well, including catching pneumonia in Milo when all we could tell was he was running a fever some years ago. So I put on my N95 mask to try to keep from sharing germs, and went to CareNow. When I was finally seen by the doctor, he was not at all concerned with coronavirus concerns and he ordered X-rays, flu and strep swabs for me. When he came back he said everything looked "great" and so he was very concerned about a pulmonary embolism. "Any time I see someone struggling to breathe like you are, without any clear reasons why, I think you should go to the ER to make sure you don't have a blood clot." I called David. Since it had started slow and gotten worse over four days I didn't think it was really likely, but having a family history of clots it unfortunately wasn't something we thought we could blow off.
I did what any rational person would do. I went home and changed into comfy clothes, helped David put the kids to bed, grabbed my phone charger and headphones, and went to Medical City of McKinney's ER. That's where the Twilight Zone began.
At Medical City, nurses in masks greeted me. They asked me if I had recently traveled to China, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle (no), or if I had recently been in contact with someone who had been confirmed positive for COVID-19 (no). Then they put a bracelet on me that I later learned meant I wasn't a risk for COVID. I gave them the rundown, all my symptoms, my shortness of breath, the fact that the urgent care doc wanted me screened for a PE (pulmonary embolism). The nurses and doctor seemed as skeptical of that concern as I was - or more. The ER doctor was a very sweet man who had helped my dad last year, so I felt immediately thankful. I was eventually roomed and the nurse - Katrina - came in and started prepping me for flu and strep swabs - again - and bloodwork. She was so sweet kept me talking and totally kept me from worrying while she was in there. Then the RN came in and he did the swabs and asked me why I was there, so I went through it all again. He almost laughed at me, like my fever climbing to 101 at one point wasn't a high enough fever to be in there. But I was in because I couldn't breathe. I told him my chest felt so tight it almost hurt, and I just couldn't catch my breath and it had just been getting worse. Another X-ray and more waiting. I had still been wearing my mask, but the nurse told me I could take it off.
When the results came back in, the doctor told me "the X-ray looked fine, the labs all look great, no sign of a clot, no flu, no strep, no pneumonia!" So he gave me a steroid prescription and sent me home. I asked at least three times for a COVID test, but he said I didn't fit the CDC's parameters. I had all the symptoms, but because I hadn't traveled or been around a known positive case, they wouldn't test me. I asked how I could know I had been around someone who was + when no one is being tested, and he said he was doing all he could with the guidelines he had to date.
Tuesday night, it was so bad that I couldn't get out more than about 4 words at a time without taking a breath. I couldn't walk, couldn't get the kids dinner without panting. I tried calling the CDC to see if there was anywhere I could get a COVID-19 test in our area. Almost two hours of holding, and no one ever answered. I called my PCP but they said I needed to go back to the ER. I called our County Health Department and asked them if I could get a test anywhere. They said I couldn't get one anywhere without a doctor's order. They told me to "treat it like a cold" and "isolate yourself in your room." I tried to tell them (while crying and struggling to breathe) what I was going through and that I needed a test. I told them I was extra concerned because we needed to know if my husband, who interacts with hundreds of people daily, needed to be quarantined. No dice. I called Parkland, who had opened their testing up that day, but they said it was only for existing patients or employees.
Wednesday (the 18th) morning, I tried to take a shower and couldn't even stand up, the shortness of breath was so bad. So David took a sick day and they dropped me off at Baylor's ER. The entire front of the hospital was roped off, directing everyone to the Emergency Room entrance. Outside, nurses asked me if I had recently had a fever, cough, shortness of breath. I said yes, all of it. They told me to walk to the left. I followed a newly constructed covered path to the side of the ER. A large white tent was constructed, but empty. I waited to be triaged. Within thirty minutes, my temperature was taken, blood pressure measured, strep swab taken, and a flu swab that I'm pretty sure went into my brain. I tried using my phone to update people, but the charge nurse said we all needed to have our phones turned off and put away. I asked why and was told it was for "contamination concerns." Because by entering that area, we were potentially around others who had COVID-19 and could spread it onto our phones. Thirty minutes later I was finally escorted inside to the decontamination room where I was told to wait. There were ten other people sitting and standing around the room.
Immediately upon entering, it was obvious tensions were high. Some people had been in that room (the size of our kitchen) for five hours. At one point there would be 13 of us in this room. I had overheard a nurse saying it was a 2-4 hour wait, but assumed this wait would occur in an ER bed. Not so, it soon became apparent. Someone asked why I was there, and as I struggled to talk between breaths, someone else said, "Oh, sweetie, save your breath. It's ok. We get it." Some time in the next hour, they got their X-ray machine up and running and began giving everyone chest X-rays. About an hour after that, people slowly started being called out of the room. Around hour 4 for me I started really struggling to breathe again. This triggered what I now believe was a panic attack (my first). Breathing became even more difficult, I started crying (which did not help the breathing situation), I started to worry that I would not get a breathing treatment at all, that I would just be sent home again. I knocked on the door and told the nurse standing outside that I really couldn't breathe. My hands went numb, I started sobbing, my feet started going numb. She took my vitals, and everything looked ok. I started getting asked to go back in the room, even though they were "sorry it was a little small." To be clear, it was not claustrophobia that got to me. It was the fear or not being able to breathe. The very kind nurse that was near the door I think called the doctor who promised me a steroid and breathing treatment were coming. I tried to tell him that it wasn't the size of the room that he, too, was apologizing for that was my problem. I had been there for four hours with breathing problems and hadn't been treated. I was scared and tired and I could overhear them saying things like, "Well, clinically she looks fine, so let's get her back in the room and then send her home." It was sitting in the decontamination room for hours on end, with no food, no water, no blanket (I was freezing and was told they weren't allowed "because of the virus"), watching others slowly trickle out while I tried to breathe and relieve my bad back by shifting in the chair for the 300th time. The doctor told me my X-ray looked great, no flu or strep (still), and no clear signs that I had COVID-19. "It's probably viral bronchitis," he told me, "though COVID can't really be ruled out until you get your test results."
I was finally given a strong steroid (the Baylor doc couldn't believe the Medical City doc had prescribed me such a low dose before and discharged me without any breathing aid), and an albuterol inhaler. They waited thirty minutes and I felt a little relief from the meds, so they told me to go home. I now have to be under a 14-day self-quarantine because I had potentially been around positive cases and there was a chance I could have picked it up in there if I didn't already have it.
Thursday (the 19th) I felt the same. Tightness in chest, couldn't talk or move without panting. Friday, I woke up feeling better. I also finally got a call from Baylor saying that my COVID test was negative! Praise! (Admittedly, I'm still skeptical of these results. I haven't gotten really sick in over 8 years. No medicines needed for anything except pain. So I'm still suspicious.) I asked the nurse on the phone if he could tell me if I had been in the room with any confirmed positive cases, but because I only knew first names, he couldn't. "I can tell you," he said, "That for every 100 tests, we're only seeing one to three actually show positive." Initially that number seems small - until you think about how many hundreds of people are around you. I also have wondered how many positive cases were not given tests for days before the guidelines changed, how many were told to go home without being told to self-quarantine.
I write all of this not to create sympathy for me, not to stir up anger at the healthcare system (which could use your prayers especially now), not to create more fear - we have quite enough of that.
I wanted to share my experience in the hopes that you will understand why it is so important to stay home right now. Believe me when I say you do not want to have to go to the hospital right now. Stay home and take your vitamin C and D. Spend time praying and reading and cleaning. Work on projects you've been meaning to tackle for months or years. Take walks. Redeem the time; it's easy to do. But please, if you're able, stay home. Whether you agree or disagree with the stats and the virus' strength, stay home when you're not working. (Plus there's just still a lot of flu and strep going around! Avoid catching that!) Staying home is an easy way we can show love for our neighbors right now - who may be or have family and/or friends who are vulnerable to complications from this illness. Stay home. Keep your health. Avoid having to go to the hospital, because it can be a traumatic experience right now. I felt nothing but sympathy for the nurses and doctors who were doing the very best they could with an unfathomably chaotic situation, in which the guidelines were changing day by day. Stay home so we can slow the spread and the healthcare workers can go home to their families safely and rest. Staying home should keep you from catching anything, taking some of the burden off of our healthcare system right now. Please. I'm begging you. Stay home. Not being able to breathe is one of the scariest things I've gone through - trumped only by my child not being able to breathe and my child losing consciousness in my arms from a concussion. And because I wasn't critical, it took five hours for me to receive treatment at the ER.
Please. Stay home. It's hard, and it's lonely, yes. I'm one week in and I can vouch for that! But if it helps someone else (avoid getting sick, or just free up the medical resources not being used on you because you're home and healthy), isn't it worth it?
On Friday the 13th (yes) I woke up tired but I hadn't been sleeping well the whole week. I went to physical therapy as scheduled, and was just way more fatigued than I had been for a long time. I was struggling so much that my therapist stopped me about halfway through to check my blood pressure and heart rate, which were fine. I chalked it up to lack of sleep and exercise that week.
That afternoon I slowly kept turning the temperature in the house up warmer and warmer. Around dinner time I finally asked the kids if they were cold too. Sam looked at me like I was nuts. Crap. I had a fever. So did Milo and Caleb (who had been miserable all day). The next day, Caleb and I were still fevered, congested and tired. Milo ran a fever off and on too. Sunday was the same. But my fever got up to 101. Body aches, headache, chills, some congestion, a little bit of a dry cough, but I kept getting more and more short of breath. For several nights I couldn't sleep because I was just so uncomfortable. Monday the 16th it was so bad that I got winded just moving laundry from the washer to the dryer. I knew I needed to see someone.
By the time David got home from work, I had to go to an urgent care facility. I chose CareNow because they've treated our kids really well, including catching pneumonia in Milo when all we could tell was he was running a fever some years ago. So I put on my N95 mask to try to keep from sharing germs, and went to CareNow. When I was finally seen by the doctor, he was not at all concerned with coronavirus concerns and he ordered X-rays, flu and strep swabs for me. When he came back he said everything looked "great" and so he was very concerned about a pulmonary embolism. "Any time I see someone struggling to breathe like you are, without any clear reasons why, I think you should go to the ER to make sure you don't have a blood clot." I called David. Since it had started slow and gotten worse over four days I didn't think it was really likely, but having a family history of clots it unfortunately wasn't something we thought we could blow off.
I did what any rational person would do. I went home and changed into comfy clothes, helped David put the kids to bed, grabbed my phone charger and headphones, and went to Medical City of McKinney's ER. That's where the Twilight Zone began.
At Medical City, nurses in masks greeted me. They asked me if I had recently traveled to China, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle (no), or if I had recently been in contact with someone who had been confirmed positive for COVID-19 (no). Then they put a bracelet on me that I later learned meant I wasn't a risk for COVID. I gave them the rundown, all my symptoms, my shortness of breath, the fact that the urgent care doc wanted me screened for a PE (pulmonary embolism). The nurses and doctor seemed as skeptical of that concern as I was - or more. The ER doctor was a very sweet man who had helped my dad last year, so I felt immediately thankful. I was eventually roomed and the nurse - Katrina - came in and started prepping me for flu and strep swabs - again - and bloodwork. She was so sweet kept me talking and totally kept me from worrying while she was in there. Then the RN came in and he did the swabs and asked me why I was there, so I went through it all again. He almost laughed at me, like my fever climbing to 101 at one point wasn't a high enough fever to be in there. But I was in because I couldn't breathe. I told him my chest felt so tight it almost hurt, and I just couldn't catch my breath and it had just been getting worse. Another X-ray and more waiting. I had still been wearing my mask, but the nurse told me I could take it off.
When the results came back in, the doctor told me "the X-ray looked fine, the labs all look great, no sign of a clot, no flu, no strep, no pneumonia!" So he gave me a steroid prescription and sent me home. I asked at least three times for a COVID test, but he said I didn't fit the CDC's parameters. I had all the symptoms, but because I hadn't traveled or been around a known positive case, they wouldn't test me. I asked how I could know I had been around someone who was + when no one is being tested, and he said he was doing all he could with the guidelines he had to date.
Tuesday night, it was so bad that I couldn't get out more than about 4 words at a time without taking a breath. I couldn't walk, couldn't get the kids dinner without panting. I tried calling the CDC to see if there was anywhere I could get a COVID-19 test in our area. Almost two hours of holding, and no one ever answered. I called my PCP but they said I needed to go back to the ER. I called our County Health Department and asked them if I could get a test anywhere. They said I couldn't get one anywhere without a doctor's order. They told me to "treat it like a cold" and "isolate yourself in your room." I tried to tell them (while crying and struggling to breathe) what I was going through and that I needed a test. I told them I was extra concerned because we needed to know if my husband, who interacts with hundreds of people daily, needed to be quarantined. No dice. I called Parkland, who had opened their testing up that day, but they said it was only for existing patients or employees.
Wednesday (the 18th) morning, I tried to take a shower and couldn't even stand up, the shortness of breath was so bad. So David took a sick day and they dropped me off at Baylor's ER. The entire front of the hospital was roped off, directing everyone to the Emergency Room entrance. Outside, nurses asked me if I had recently had a fever, cough, shortness of breath. I said yes, all of it. They told me to walk to the left. I followed a newly constructed covered path to the side of the ER. A large white tent was constructed, but empty. I waited to be triaged. Within thirty minutes, my temperature was taken, blood pressure measured, strep swab taken, and a flu swab that I'm pretty sure went into my brain. I tried using my phone to update people, but the charge nurse said we all needed to have our phones turned off and put away. I asked why and was told it was for "contamination concerns." Because by entering that area, we were potentially around others who had COVID-19 and could spread it onto our phones. Thirty minutes later I was finally escorted inside to the decontamination room where I was told to wait. There were ten other people sitting and standing around the room.
Immediately upon entering, it was obvious tensions were high. Some people had been in that room (the size of our kitchen) for five hours. At one point there would be 13 of us in this room. I had overheard a nurse saying it was a 2-4 hour wait, but assumed this wait would occur in an ER bed. Not so, it soon became apparent. Someone asked why I was there, and as I struggled to talk between breaths, someone else said, "Oh, sweetie, save your breath. It's ok. We get it." Some time in the next hour, they got their X-ray machine up and running and began giving everyone chest X-rays. About an hour after that, people slowly started being called out of the room. Around hour 4 for me I started really struggling to breathe again. This triggered what I now believe was a panic attack (my first). Breathing became even more difficult, I started crying (which did not help the breathing situation), I started to worry that I would not get a breathing treatment at all, that I would just be sent home again. I knocked on the door and told the nurse standing outside that I really couldn't breathe. My hands went numb, I started sobbing, my feet started going numb. She took my vitals, and everything looked ok. I started getting asked to go back in the room, even though they were "sorry it was a little small." To be clear, it was not claustrophobia that got to me. It was the fear or not being able to breathe. The very kind nurse that was near the door I think called the doctor who promised me a steroid and breathing treatment were coming. I tried to tell him that it wasn't the size of the room that he, too, was apologizing for that was my problem. I had been there for four hours with breathing problems and hadn't been treated. I was scared and tired and I could overhear them saying things like, "Well, clinically she looks fine, so let's get her back in the room and then send her home." It was sitting in the decontamination room for hours on end, with no food, no water, no blanket (I was freezing and was told they weren't allowed "because of the virus"), watching others slowly trickle out while I tried to breathe and relieve my bad back by shifting in the chair for the 300th time. The doctor told me my X-ray looked great, no flu or strep (still), and no clear signs that I had COVID-19. "It's probably viral bronchitis," he told me, "though COVID can't really be ruled out until you get your test results."
I was finally given a strong steroid (the Baylor doc couldn't believe the Medical City doc had prescribed me such a low dose before and discharged me without any breathing aid), and an albuterol inhaler. They waited thirty minutes and I felt a little relief from the meds, so they told me to go home. I now have to be under a 14-day self-quarantine because I had potentially been around positive cases and there was a chance I could have picked it up in there if I didn't already have it.
Thursday (the 19th) I felt the same. Tightness in chest, couldn't talk or move without panting. Friday, I woke up feeling better. I also finally got a call from Baylor saying that my COVID test was negative! Praise! (Admittedly, I'm still skeptical of these results. I haven't gotten really sick in over 8 years. No medicines needed for anything except pain. So I'm still suspicious.) I asked the nurse on the phone if he could tell me if I had been in the room with any confirmed positive cases, but because I only knew first names, he couldn't. "I can tell you," he said, "That for every 100 tests, we're only seeing one to three actually show positive." Initially that number seems small - until you think about how many hundreds of people are around you. I also have wondered how many positive cases were not given tests for days before the guidelines changed, how many were told to go home without being told to self-quarantine.
I write all of this not to create sympathy for me, not to stir up anger at the healthcare system (which could use your prayers especially now), not to create more fear - we have quite enough of that.
I wanted to share my experience in the hopes that you will understand why it is so important to stay home right now. Believe me when I say you do not want to have to go to the hospital right now. Stay home and take your vitamin C and D. Spend time praying and reading and cleaning. Work on projects you've been meaning to tackle for months or years. Take walks. Redeem the time; it's easy to do. But please, if you're able, stay home. Whether you agree or disagree with the stats and the virus' strength, stay home when you're not working. (Plus there's just still a lot of flu and strep going around! Avoid catching that!) Staying home is an easy way we can show love for our neighbors right now - who may be or have family and/or friends who are vulnerable to complications from this illness. Stay home. Keep your health. Avoid having to go to the hospital, because it can be a traumatic experience right now. I felt nothing but sympathy for the nurses and doctors who were doing the very best they could with an unfathomably chaotic situation, in which the guidelines were changing day by day. Stay home so we can slow the spread and the healthcare workers can go home to their families safely and rest. Staying home should keep you from catching anything, taking some of the burden off of our healthcare system right now. Please. I'm begging you. Stay home. Not being able to breathe is one of the scariest things I've gone through - trumped only by my child not being able to breathe and my child losing consciousness in my arms from a concussion. And because I wasn't critical, it took five hours for me to receive treatment at the ER.
Please. Stay home. It's hard, and it's lonely, yes. I'm one week in and I can vouch for that! But if it helps someone else (avoid getting sick, or just free up the medical resources not being used on you because you're home and healthy), isn't it worth it?
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