A Covid Experience: Three Years Later, by Tom In Alaska 

It was October 31, 2021. I was living in Arizona with a full season of cool weather hiking on the calendar. The first (and last) walk of the season was delightful. The temperatures were on the warm side and a steady breeze was kicking up the omnipresent Arizona dust.

I arrived home in the evening filled with the satisfaction of a good first day but told my wife that my throat was slightly sore from the “blowing dust”

Waking on November 1st with a 102 F fever was an omen. The next day I immediately drove to the local Urgent Care and was diagnosed with Covid. My thought was, okay, I’ll be sick for a while but the vitamins, zinc, healthy diet, and penchant for walking would allow for an easy recovery. Wrong!

I remember leaving the Urgent Care facility, entering my vehicle, and then nothing more than that until several days after being removed from a ventilator.

Here is the rest of the story:

For several days after arriving home from Urgent Care, my fever spiked up and down between 103F and 104F. My wife asked me if I wanted to visit the emergency room. Apparently, I consistently said “no” but have no recollection of it or anything else for that matter.

After three days my dear wife somehow placed me in our truck and took me to the emergency room at Gilbert Mercy Hospital. The place was in overflow (so I am told) and I was placed in a hallway to wait for a room. I was lucky to receive a room after a wait time of twelve hours in the hallway.

Initially, I was given oxygen for several days but reached the point where the pulmonologist called my wife (she was also now stricken with covid and restricted to home) and recommended intubation. After a few days on the ventilator and a regimen of Remdesivir, my son and daughter were contacted and told my condition was grave prompting them to show up at the hospital. They could not visit me in intensive care but their visit meant something to the entire family …. The dynamics of that visitation are difficult to explain.

After five days, the pulmonologist again called my wife and suggested that he saw some improvement in breathing capacity and determined that removal from the ventilator was the next step. My wife authorized that removal. That was mid-November. The first voice I faintly remember was a hospital technician enthusiastically stating ‘congratulations, you made it off the ventilator!”

The following weeks were in the recovery mode. Coming off the drugs caused hallucinations, nightmares and confusion. I asked one nurse ‘what country is this”? To another nurse, I asked, why are clocks moving backwards? Shaking the cobwebs was just awful. And I am sure I drove the nurses crazy. At one point intensive care called my wife to ask if I suffered from dementia. Well, I suffered from the drugs that are used to “quiet” the intubated. They were brutal and thinking about it I wonder how anyone could become a drug addict.

Slowly, I regained my awareness to the situation and looked out the window to see those beloved Arizona mountains. Pining to get back on the trail, I realized I could not get up from the bed let alone walk. Once placed in a chair for the first time, I could not get up from that position. It is amazing how quickly your muscles deteriorate when not used for a month or so. Especially after tremendous weight loss.

Eventually, therapists got me up and moving around periodically in between the therapy of receiving a multitude of anti-blood clot injections and whatever else they were putting into my “pic-line IV”. Daily doctor visitations always ended with the question ‘when can I go home’. The answer was always ‘not yet’. That went on for days.

Thanksgiving was on the way and I was very cold and lonely in the purposely kept cold intensive care area. Upon improvement, I was delivered to Encompass rehabilitation hospital where I could learn to walk, shave, shower, and pine for home cooking. The young man assigned to my rehab was fabulous. He would visit twice a day and take me into the “gym” area. If I was asked to ride an exercise bike five minutes, I did ten. Walk one lap around the facility with a walker? I did two. I doubled every request they made. And much more. I also shared a lot of local hiking information with the young staff which they seemed to appreciate …. or a least they pretended.

At my insistence, I was discharged a little bit early on Thanksgiving Day 2021. But the caveat was, to perform all the exercises and careful walking that they prescribed. I doubled and tripled it in short order.

Covid was a terrible time in our history and I was more than lucky to barely survive. I owe it to a terrific hospital and their superb personnel. And to a wonderful rehabilitation hospital. Methinks the Good Lord wanted me in Arizona to receive that advantage.

Discussion with hospital personnel indicated that I was one of their “twenty percent” who successfully made it off the ventilator without dying. They attributed it to the outstanding physical condition of an active, non-smoking, clean-living 72-year-old hiking fanatic.

This event had a happy ending but there are after-effects of Covid. I suffer from a little fatigue; more arthritis and mysterious rashes that come and go …. which my doctor attributes to an immune system situation from “long covid”. I also suffered minor permanent heart damage and for the first time in my life I take a daily pill.

Other than that, “I embrace today’s moment” more than ever and have chugged along to be 76 years old. Maybe not feeling as well as I used to, but still consider myself darn lucky. And especially blessed and personally overwhelmed by the prayers of so many that were answered by The Lord.

And through a special experience, I know He was there.