My COVID Experience

I’d like to tell a little story, and try to condense several weeks into a short story. The start of the new year was a rough one for me. As a younger, healthy, fit person you likely didn’t give COVID too much thought other than needing to wear a mask in public and try to protect those you know considered high-risk. You probably felt the risk to yourself is quite low. Well, early to mid-January my wife and I both contracted COVID. She tested positive first showing flu-like symptoms so I took a rapid test just to see but it came back negative, however, I didn’t believe it and started feeling a light scratchy throat. The next day, January 12, I went in for the PCR test to be sent out and lo and behold 48 hours later the results came back positive. I figured it’d be over pretty quick and easy. It started with a day of body aches that morphed into localized pain and tightness in my right ribs.

This lasted for a few days. Per doctor office directions, I was consistent with the heat pad and Aleve but to no avail. I was prescribed a steroid that actually helped. I had some relief for the 7 days it lasted, but a cough developed, a dry cough. I guzzled Robutussin and sucked Halls cough drops day and night. As symptoms weren’t subsiding, I continued to call the local Urgent Care but kept getting the runaround. Even though I was past my quarantine period they wouldn’t schedule an appointment in-person; I could only have virtual calls with my doctor. This puts me at around end of the week of January 22. I made a couple attempts at modified workouts but I just couldn’t do it. I had zero energy and motivation and lacked the lung capacity to do much.

Going into my third week of this, that weekend things went downhill quick. That localized pain in my ribs had moved upward into my upper back and chest; I had shortness of breath and could barely stand up straight nonetheless any kind of useful out of bed. Somewhere in all of this insomnia crept in, probably about the time the intensified coughing hit so I had been sleeping on the couch out of curtesy to my wife. I couldn’t sleep more than a couple hours at a time and for some reason by 3:00 am I was just awake. Again, we called the Urgent Care but was told the same thing – those are all symptoms of COVID and just take time. I was prescribed stronger cough pills, and two different inhalers but none seemed to have an effect. While changing my shirt one day, my wife noticed a large rash had spread covering my entire stomach into my arm pits. Nothing in our soaps, detergents or other products had changed so there wasn’t a clear answer for that. I considered it possibly a reaction to some of these new medications so I was told to stop taking the medications and take Benadryl right away. It helped with the itch but the rash didn’t dissipate. We had had enough. No one was providing any answers and things had only gotten worse over those 2 ½ weeks. Up until now I hadn’t had any fever but that third week I had a consistent fever of around 101.5. On Tuesday January 26 I finally got in for a chest x-ray to eliminate pneumonia as an option and it somehow came back negative; I haven’t yet seen a copy of that. We asked about secondary infections but again these seemed to be just the typical COVID symptoms and everyone reacts differently but they finally prescribed a Z-pak. I was 2 days into that and while my doctor was out of office I scheduled another virtual appointment with a different doctor early morning Friday January 29. I did my best to talk up everything I’d been experiencing those couple weeks and she said the only other thing she could do is get me into the hospital for a CT Scan to see if there’s anything else going on.

On Friday, January 29, my wife drove me to the hospital. We went through the normal waiting process and eventually taken to a room where they took another chest x-ray before the CT scan. It was clear from these scans that I needed to be admitted right away and pumped full of antibiotics. I didn’t know it at the time but I had entered the hospital with sepsis - a potentially life-threatening condition caused by the body’s response to an infection. Had I waited much longer to be physically seen and evaluated I could’ve been looking at organ damage or failure. This would explain the recently developed fevers, low blood pressure, shortness of breath and likely the rash across my body. Anyway, I’m given the IV’s, fluids and all that and wheeled up to my room where rounds and rounds of antibiotics are started. Before this I had been through 2 days of a prescribed Z-pak which had probably helped a little. Cultures taken at the hospital all came back negative so that’s why the diagnosis wasn’t empyema even though I was being treated for complex pleural effusion - meaning your body had built many walls around the fluid – a rather painful condition of excess pus and fluid in the space between your lungs and chest wall. While your lungs don’t have pain receptors, your chest wall does. According to Johns Hopkins, the infected fluid can build up to a quantity of a pint or more, which puts pressure on the lungs, causing shortness of breath and pain.

Technically this was a complication of pneumonia – it started as regular pneumonia and had time to develop into empyema which has to be drained manually. My first chest tube was done by CT Scan with the aid of general anesthesia and placed underneath my right shoulder blade. Due to the sedatives for the procedure I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything starting midnight before the procedure. If it was scheduled for the morning I would’ve been okay but it kept getting pushed back because the CT scanner was undergoing maintenance so I’m withering away throughout the day. They finally came to wheel me down around 6:00pm so I’m nearly 24 hours without food and water but the procedure goes very well. I recommend using the sedatives if you can. That night was pretty awful. I was already having sleep issues on top of being in the hospital hooked up to tubes and IV’s and nurses coming in every couple hours but mix the antibiotics with the lack of food and water caused me to stay up vomiting in the bedside trash can.

I had a few days of just the one tube but scans had shown two major pockets of fluid so it was decided to put in another. The first tube wasn’t getting anything from the upper chest pocket so the doctor knew I needed another tube. He couldn’t promise when another CT appointment would be available and offered to put it in bedside with the aid of an ultrasound. I decided if he felt comfortable to do it then let’s do it now and get it over with. This was easily one of the top two worst experiences of my life. All I had was a shot of morphine, and local anesthetic, and the hand of an angel named Joe. Joe was the charge nurse for the day. While the doctor is opening up a hole through my upper pec with nail gauges Joe was there wiping the sweat from my face and letting my squeeze his hand for dear life. After about 40 minutes and Shannon impatiently waiting outside the room past visiting hours, the tube is finally in… but it wasn’t draining like it should. Somehow it wasn’t in the fluid pocket, so the decision was to get another X ray first remove it and try to get it back in via CT the next day. So once again I have orders to eliminate any food and drink. I was dreading the next day based off previous experience. Shannon had been keeping me company during the visiting hours which was a blessing. I was already going crazy being nearly bed ridden but to have Shannon there with me made it a little more tolerable.  

I can’t even remember how many times my IV had to change locations because they stopped working for whatever reason. I will admit that I inadvertently broke one that was in the crook of my arm, but I had needle holes all over. Two blood draws a day (first one at 4am… WHY?!) and a blood thinner shot in the stomach every morning. I was already having trouble breathing but having tubes in makes it even more difficult. For anyone who’s spend time in the hospital you might remember the common question “on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your pain?” Most often I’d say I was sitting at an 8 so I was offered a rotation of pain meds throughout the day. With having multiple IVs in my arms and often in the crook of my arm it was hard feeding myself so Shannon helped with some of that. In order to even sit up and lay down in bed I needed someone to make sure the tubes weren’t getting caught on anything as I was getting up. Most of the time in order to pee I was limited to a handheld urinal bedside. On occasion I was able to detach my tubes to get up and wheel my IV rack into the bathroom. With the tube in my back I wasn’t able to lay flat in bed so I was given a foam triangle to prop me up, nor could I lay all the way back because it was harder to breath so my sleeping position was limited being elevated on my left side.

About mid week my next scan and tube procedure kept getting delayed for other more urgent patients so I’m sitting in despair thinking I may have to wither away for another day like the first time, but good news came early afternoon and I was ready to be wheeled back to the operating room. Once again, the sedatives did their job and I can’t remember the last half of the procedure. While I was in there, they not only put in the front chest tube but also replaced and upsized the back tube. The fluid flowed like a river. Surprisingly, it wasn’t stopping. How much can possibly be in there. So days go by and I’m barely able to force myself to eat with little appetite and some blood work was starting to show malnutrition so I’m doing the best I can to shovel in the easiest to eat food I could order. The front tube stayed in for a couple of days but wasn’t draining much. They think that it had drained during the procedure so after a couple of days it could be taken out. It was held in place by a stitch and lots of saran wrap looking bandages that were stuck to my chest hair and nipple. I felt like Steve Carrell in 40-year Old Virgin when they ripped it off. I still had a couple of days with only the rear tube in so my sleeping was still near non-existent and uncomfortable.

I had been admitted for a full week come Friday February 5. This weekend was the Super Bowl, followed by my birthday. I’m not a very emotionally expressive person but the news the doctor gave Friday morning nearly had me to tears. I was reaching my breaking point; I couldn’t take it anymore AND hospital cable sucks! If I’m limited to my bed for 23 hours a day at least have more than two watchable channels…

The drainage hadn’t slowed so I’d need to stay the weekend and he’ll revisit on Monday. He gave the option of going home with a portable tank which was quite tempting just to get out of the hospital but discussing it with Shannon we knew that wasn’t a good idea. Our house if full of animals with a toddler so I was trying to mentally prepare myself to spend the weekend and possibly my birthday in the hospital. Come Friday afternoon the doctor was making his final rounds before he left for the weekend and prayers were answered. By his visit the drainage had nearly stopped. He felt comfortable with taking the remaining tube out and sending me home! I once again got choked up hearing this. I felt a huge weight off my shoulders and I could [somewhat] relax. So sitting up facing the window I gave a loud “HUUUUUUMMMMMM” while the rear tube was pulled out. It happened so fast I couldn’t tell if it were pain or relief I was feeling. The amount of pus and fluid drained was astonishing. How could all of that have been around my lung? It was nearly 4 liters, or 1 gallon! We waited for what seemed forever but we finally got the discharge orders and I could go home. Bandaged up and breathing [a little] easier and while I didn’t sleep great I slept the best I had in weeks – next to Shannon, in my own bed.

Early in my hospital stay while talking to the pulmonologist we discussed everything that brought me to this point so I brought up my wisdom tooth removal on January 6 followed by the positive COVID test on January 12 and how everything got worse from there. Turns out my condition is often seen in patients who are binging alcoholics, meth addicts, smokers, and some other things – none of which I am – except for the dental surgery. While rare, somehow mouth bacteria made its way into my lungs during the dental procedure causing an infection. So, after all of this, this wasn’t even the result of COVID and who knows which symptoms were even COVID to begin with; it was just a perfect storm of events that turned out to be more critical that I had known. Thankfully we didn’t wait any longer to go to the hospital but it is unfortunate that it took that long to actually be seen. I knew I had lost a lot of weight but I had to weight until all the bloatedness went away to find out; my stomach looked like an uneven soccer ball. It took a few days but it finally went down. I haven’t weighed this much since college. Everyone could see it in my face and I could tell from shirt sleeves that are normally well-fitted on my arms and shoulders were now loose. All-in-all I lost 15 lbs, and not a good 15 lbs. I know my recovery will take time I have a long road to healing and re-expanding of my lung. I’m still on a 10 lb lifting restriction and limited activity. Hell, I started having a coughing fit just taking the trash can to the curb. It’ll be tough both physically and mentally getting back into the gym in needing to take it slow and really ease back into it but I have such a wonderful, supportive community at Eureka CrossFit I know I’ll get back to where I was working with them. While this was a mentally and physically tough experience for me I strongly believe my health and fitness level and consistent attendance in Eureka CrossFit played a big role in how this turned out. I don’t think it would have turned out nearly as “well” had I not been physically active to keep good health prior. We’ll see how my 3-week follow up scan looks and go from there!