Chris

LAKE PLACID, FLORIDA - November 17, 2020: The day I discovered I had Covid, I had a dream. This person comes to the door, and they can't get in. In the dream, I asked my mom, “Who is this person in this dream?” 

She said, “Oh, he’s an imposter.”

I said, “Well, why was he dressed like that?” 

She said, “He is trying to pose as a doctor.”

I said, “Why is he trying to pose to be a doctor?”

She said, “Because he wants to trick you so he can get it.” 

I said, “Well, why does he want to get in?” 

She said, “Because he wants to deceive you.” I woke up, and I had no idea what that meant.

That night, I went downstairs and laid on my mom's floor. I would get very, very cold, or I would get very, very hot. It just kept going back and forth. I didn't know what was going on with me. But I wasn't having trouble smelling or tasting stuff, so I thought maybe I was tripping, and it’s just something else. All I knew was that I had a dream, and within 24 hours, I was sick.

My mom told me, “Maybe you need to go to the hospital.” I was freaking out. I did not want to go as I did not know if I would make it out. But I went anyway. This was my first time going to the hospital. First, they tested me with a rapid test and told me I was negative. Still, they kept me in the hospital and did a regular test that took a few days. I was on the regular floor first. Then, they moved me to the Covid floor and a low-pressure room. That's when I found out I had Covid.

As soon as they told me I tested positive, my whole world dropped. Fear just jumped on me because I heard about people dying from Covid, especially people who have underlying issues. I have many underlying issues: sleep apnea, osteoarthritis, nerve damage, obesity. I used an asthma pump. I deal with chronic pain, gout, problems with my spine. You know, so many things.

So, they put me in a low-pressure room where no one could visit. They entered the room with masks and everything on. I kept thinking  I don't want to die. I was feeling fragile. I was in pain like never before. You can’t avoid the overall fear of the pandemic and what was going on as it's all around you 24/7, especially in a hospital. One of the worst parts of being in the hospital with Covid is hearing people screaming.

Within eight days, they discharged me and asked me to quarantine. Within a few days from that, I started having trouble breathing. So, I went to a different hospital. By this time, I was feeling bad. The doctor gave me an antibiotic and sent me back home. He asked me to come back if it got worse. I went home, but within a few days, I was back again. This time it was even worse. The hospital was crowded. It was at capacity, and they were waiting for other people to get discharged just to get other patients into a room. 

I was sitting there with oxygen beside the wall. I broke down. I felt like no one cared. I felt like I could be dying right now. I thought I was because I had never felt the way I was feeling.  I was to the point that I didn't even want to be there anymore. But I was hearing God telling me that I would be OK, that he created me for a time like this. It wasn't too long after that I started hearing someone else telling me that I should kill myself because I had been going through it for a few weeks. I had some people check on me, but I don't think some people even believed that I had Covid or believed the extent of what Covid could do.

They treated me for a week. I thought I was getting better, so I went home again. After a week or two, I started having trouble breathing again. I was lying on my stomach, and my chest started feeling like I was underwater, so I went back to the hospital. It seemed like almost every other day I'm back in either for side effects, the medication or the symptoms in my body that they couldn’t pinpoint.

I told the doctor there that my stomach was hurting really bad, and he started telling me that I'm lying and I'm making stuff up. When you have Covid, it intensifies everything, and it causes stuff in your body to hurt that they can't figure out. He gets in an argument with me and tells me that he’s going to discharge me but will give me medication first.

I have three different medications that I am not supposed to take as I am allergic to them. I can’t take ibuprofen as it can cause internal bleeding. I can’t take some blood pressure medicine as it makes me feel like my throat is choking and I can’t breathe. I can’t take Tramadol. He told them to give me morphine and give me a cocktail for my stomach but totally gave me Tramadol. At first, I was reluctant, but I was hurting so bad that I told him to give it to me, but I didn't expect him to give it to me and discharge me in 20 minutes as I was under the influence of medication. When I got home, I lay down and again couldn't breathe. I felt like I was suffocating.

I went to a different hospital this time. They were not ready to treat me. They told me that the other facility had sent information that said nothing was wrong with me. They told me my oxygen was fine. I said, “What? Can you at least give me something to help me with my breathing because I can't breathe properly right now?” She said, “Well, your oxygen is fine. There's nothing wrong with you. So you just need to go home and quarantine.”

I asked her again, “Ma'am, I'm telling you something is wrong with me.” Now I ended up in another dispute at a different hospital. I called my brother, and we went home. It was 5:30 in the morning as we had been up all night. I said to myself, “This is crazy. Like no one believes me.” I felt like God was telling me I needed to go to a different hospital. So I called the ambulance. They came to get me. They asked me, do I want to go to the same hospital that I've been going to? At that moment, I remembered an advertisement on Facebook earlier that week for this hospital that was treating people with Covid. I asked the ambulance to take me to that hospital. So they took me. 

This lady walked into the room, looked at me, and said, “You feel like crap, don't you?”

I replied, “Yes, ma'am, I do.”

She told me, “We're going to help you. We're going to give you some antibiotics. We're going to give you some stuff to help you fight.” It seemed like the first time that someone actually believed that something was going on with me, that I wasn't making it up. At one point, I asked her, “Are you an angel?” 

She said, “No. I'm a believer though. I believe in God. I'm going to be praying for you. We're going to make sure you're OK.”

The hospital started giving me dexamethasone and some antibiotics. 

At that point, I'd already had it for six weeks and lost 50 pounds. I can't eat, really. I'm really weak. I can’t really walk. If I walk 10 feet, my heart rate jumps to 150-160.

So now they have me in this facility, and they're giving me all this stuff, and I'm having all these side effects from the meds. And they tell me I need to try to walk. I'm thinking they're crazy. I was just walking. I'm going to be OK. I couldn't walk. They told me that from losing so much weight that I was losing muscle mass. They also told me because it was attacking my respiratory system, and I had been so up and down that it finally just hit me hard, and I couldn't even walk.

I tried to walk to the bathroom one time, and within five seconds, my oxygen dropped from 100 to 78 percent. I found that when it drops to 85, people usually pass out, and when it drops to where mine dropped that day, you can die.

I never was on a respirator. But looking back at it now, I think I was right at the door of being on a respirator as oxygen was not supposed to drop like that. They started giving me treatment to open up my lungs and to make my lungs stronger. They started walking me through therapy. I felt like I was getting better.

After two or three weeks, I got out. They finally told me I was Covid negative on July 17. From May 26 to July 17th, I had  Covid. I went home, and within a week, I ended up back in the hospital. I was having trouble breathing again. They told me that I was still positive for Covid, and that’s something I did not understand. How was I negative, but now I'm positive again? 

After I was there for maybe four or five days, the doctor said, “It's funny. It's like Covid-19 is in your system right now, but it's not attacking your organs. Usually, when people have Covid, the x-ray of the lungs is like shattered glass. But it’s not showing up like that for you.” I was like, praise God. God’s holding the bag. I’m good. I leave. I go to the hospital again. I test negative. I kept going back and forth. I'm still dealing with side effects from the medication they prescribed me, but the results come back negative. I realized that I couldn’t get back to normal. 

So I go home. I try to take a shower one day. Got out of the shower. Laid on the bed. I couldn't catch my breath for two or three hours. I'm having shortness of breath, so I called the ambulance. They’re like, “What happened?” 

“I tried to take a shower.”

“You're overexerting yourself. You have to take it easy. You know, you're just coming through something very traumatic.”

At that time, it’s still not clicking. I tell the doctor at the facility what happened. He goes, “You're lucky to be alive.” 

“So I really could have died?” 

“Yeah, you could have died. You should have died with all the underlying conditions you’ve got.” So, now I’m taking it more seriously. 

But I'm still going in and out of these facilities and not really figuring out what's going on.

They went ahead and did an EGD to see if any more damage happened in my stomach post-Covid. They found I had erosion on my stomach, my stomach lining wasn't so great, and inflammation on my stomach because I have chronic gastritis.

And then, they ask me to follow up with my primary care physician. When you have symptoms, you can't see your primary care physician. They don't allow you to. They tell you if you have any symptoms to stay home. So my only help was going back and forth to the E.R. trying to get answers. I couldn't go to a specialist.

I went back a week later, and they did the CAT scan and an X-ray. At this point, I've done so many x-rays and CAT scans, I'm thinking I'm going to turn into the x-man; I’m going to be like radioactive or something. This time they come back different. They told me that my lungs were like shattered glass. Now, that's what they used to tell you when you had Covid. But my lungs came back looking like that, but they tell me I don't have it. So how are my lungs coming back looking like shattered glass, but I don't have Covid?. They said they don't know.

That's when they hospitalized me for this last time. They started giving me steroids again and started me on some antibiotics. I started itching everywhere. My hands turned red. So they ended up giving me some Benadryl because they found I had adverse effects to the antibiotic. And then they put me on a different one. They treated me for seven or eight days. They put a red bracelet that tells you not to move and not to get out without having a nurse available.

They started searching for a rehabilitation facility to put me in because they felt like I needed further treatment. They found this place, and they transported me here. This is my third week being here. They have a better understanding of people that deal with Covid.

I've been doing physical therapy four or five days a week on the days I can actually do it. I've been in constant pain, and I've been on oxygen since I've been here. I'm the youngest person here. My roommate before this was 90. My roommate now is 88 years old.

They’ve been doing four or five breathing treatments per day. And they just got to the point that today they said that I didn't have to do them anymore. Now it's just kind of like a waiting game. They're trying to get my endurance and stuff up and just continue to treat me.

When someone tells you that you could have died or you almost died, it makes you start taking things very seriously, looking at life differently. I truly believe that the Lord told me that the only reason I'm alive is because he kept me alive for something, for a purpose. And for the first time in my life, I realized that I don't have control over my life. Once you hear when you're lying in bed in pain that you can't move, that you're having all these frustrations, all these complications, and you hear a voice tell you, “The only way you're going to die is If I withdraw my breath from your lungs” and “I created you for a time as this.” It got really real for me. Even though I've been walking with the Lord for ten years, it wasn’t until I got Covid that I actually forgave my father for the stuff that happened with my mom. I forgave everyone. If I'm going to die, I want to make sure I go to heaven. I want to make sure that I'm not eternally separated from God. And I want to make sure my heart is right. Because when I was in the hospital, I never thought I was going to see my family again. 

Even though I knew it was real. I don't even think I had as much compassion concerning COVID until I got COVID. Because I felt like, well, you know, I had a mask on, but I had a mask on, and  I still got COVID.

So it's been quite a journey. I'm anxious to get back to doing what I've been doing.

LAKE PLACID, FLORIDA - November 17, 2020: The day I discovered I had Covid, I had a dream. This person comes to the door, and they can't get in. In the dream, I asked my mom, “Who is this person in this dream?” 

She said, “Oh, he’s an imposter.”

I said, “Well, why was he dressed like that?” 

She said, “He is trying to pose as a doctor.”

I said, “Why is he trying to pose to be a doctor?”

She said, “Because he wants to trick you so he can get it.” 

I said, “Well, why does he want to get in?” 

She said, “Because he wants to deceive you.” I woke up, and I had no idea what that meant.

That night, I went downstairs and laid on my mom's floor. I would get very, very cold, or I would get very, very hot. It just kept going back and forth. I didn't know what was going on with me. But I wasn't having trouble smelling or tasting stuff, so I thought maybe I was tripping, and it’s just something else. All I knew was that I had a dream, and within 24 hours, I was sick.

My mom told me, “Maybe you need to go to the hospital.” I was freaking out. I did not want to go as I did not know if I would make it out. But I went anyway. This was my first time going to the hospital. First, they tested me with a rapid test and told me I was negative. Still, they kept me in the hospital and did a regular test that took a few days. I was on the regular floor first. Then, they moved me to the Covid floor and a low-pressure room. That's when I found out I had Covid.

As soon as they told me I tested positive, my whole world dropped. Fear just jumped on me because I heard about people dying from Covid, especially people who have underlying issues. I have many underlying issues: sleep apnea, osteoarthritis, nerve damage, obesity. I used an asthma pump. I deal with chronic pain, gout, problems with my spine. You know, so many things.

So, they put me in a low-pressure room where no one could visit. They entered the room with masks and everything on. I kept thinking  I don't want to die. I was feeling fragile. I was in pain like never before. You can’t avoid the overall fear of the pandemic and what was going on as it's all around you 24/7, especially in a hospital. One of the worst parts of being in the hospital with Covid is hearing people screaming.

Within eight days, they discharged me and asked me to quarantine. Within a few days from that, I started having trouble breathing. So, I went to a different hospital. By this time, I was feeling bad. The doctor gave me an antibiotic and sent me back home. He asked me to come back if it got worse. I went home, but within a few days, I was back again. This time it was even worse. The hospital was crowded. It was at capacity, and they were waiting for other people to get discharged just to get other patients into a room. 

I was sitting there with oxygen beside the wall. I broke down. I felt like no one cared. I felt like I could be dying right now. I thought I was because I had never felt the way I was feeling.  I was to the point that I didn't even want to be there anymore. But I was hearing God telling me that I would be OK, that he created me for a time like this. It wasn't too long after that I started hearing someone else telling me that I should kill myself because I had been going through it for a few weeks. I had some people check on me, but I don't think some people even believed that I had Covid or believed the extent of what Covid could do.

They treated me for a week. I thought I was getting better, so I went home again. After a week or two, I started having trouble breathing again. I was lying on my stomach, and my chest started feeling like I was underwater, so I went back to the hospital. It seemed like almost every other day I'm back in either for side effects, the medication or the symptoms in my body that they couldn’t pinpoint.

I told the doctor there that my stomach was hurting really bad, and he started telling me that I'm lying and I'm making stuff up. When you have Covid, it intensifies everything, and it causes stuff in your body to hurt that they can't figure out. He gets in an argument with me and tells me that he’s going to discharge me but will give me medication first.

I have three different medications that I am not supposed to take as I am allergic to them. I can’t take ibuprofen as it can cause internal bleeding. I can’t take some blood pressure medicine as it makes me feel like my throat is choking and I can’t breathe. I can’t take Tramadol. He told them to give me morphine and give me a cocktail for my stomach but totally gave me Tramadol. At first, I was reluctant, but I was hurting so bad that I told him to give it to me, but I didn't expect him to give it to me and discharge me in 20 minutes as I was under the influence of medication. When I got home, I lay down and again couldn't breathe. I felt like I was suffocating.

I went to a different hospital this time. They were not ready to treat me. They told me that the other facility had sent information that said nothing was wrong with me. They told me my oxygen was fine. I said, “What? Can you at least give me something to help me with my breathing because I can't breathe properly right now?” She said, “Well, your oxygen is fine. There's nothing wrong with you. So you just need to go home and quarantine.”

I asked her again, “Ma'am, I'm telling you something is wrong with me.” Now I ended up in another dispute at a different hospital. I called my brother, and we went home. It was 5:30 in the morning as we had been up all night. I said to myself, “This is crazy. Like no one believes me.” I felt like God was telling me I needed to go to a different hospital. So I called the ambulance. They came to get me. They asked me, do I want to go to the same hospital that I've been going to? At that moment, I remembered an advertisement on Facebook earlier that week for this hospital that was treating people with Covid. I asked the ambulance to take me to that hospital. So they took me. 

This lady walked into the room, looked at me, and said, “You feel like crap, don't you?”

I replied, “Yes, ma'am, I do.”

She told me, “We're going to help you. We're going to give you some antibiotics. We're going to give you some stuff to help you fight.” It seemed like the first time that someone actually believed that something was going on with me, that I wasn't making it up. At one point, I asked her, “Are you an angel?” 

She said, “No. I'm a believer though. I believe in God. I'm going to be praying for you. We're going to make sure you're OK.”

The hospital started giving me dexamethasone and some antibiotics. 

At that point, I'd already had it for six weeks and lost 50 pounds. I can't eat, really. I'm really weak. I can’t really walk. If I walk 10 feet, my heart rate jumps to 150-160.

So now they have me in this facility, and they're giving me all this stuff, and I'm having all these side effects from the meds. And they tell me I need to try to walk. I'm thinking they're crazy. I was just walking. I'm going to be OK. I couldn't walk. They told me that from losing so much weight that I was losing muscle mass. They also told me because it was attacking my respiratory system, and I had been so up and down that it finally just hit me hard, and I couldn't even walk.

I tried to walk to the bathroom one time, and within five seconds, my oxygen dropped from 100 to 78 percent. I found that when it drops to 85, people usually pass out, and when it drops to where mine dropped that day, you can die.

I never was on a respirator. But looking back at it now, I think I was right at the door of being on a respirator as oxygen was not supposed to drop like that. They started giving me treatment to open up my lungs and to make my lungs stronger. They started walking me through therapy. I felt like I was getting better.

After two or three weeks, I got out. They finally told me I was Covid negative on July 17. From May 26 to July 17th, I had  Covid. I went home, and within a week, I ended up back in the hospital. I was having trouble breathing again. They told me that I was still positive for Covid, and that’s something I did not understand. How was I negative, but now I'm positive again? 

After I was there for maybe four or five days, the doctor said, “It's funny. It's like Covid-19 is in your system right now, but it's not attacking your organs. Usually, when people have Covid, the x-ray of the lungs is like shattered glass. But it’s not showing up like that for you.” I was like, praise God. God’s holding the bag. I’m good. I leave. I go to the hospital again. I test negative. I kept going back and forth. I'm still dealing with side effects from the medication they prescribed me, but the results come back negative. I realized that I couldn’t get back to normal. 

So I go home. I try to take a shower one day. Got out of the shower. Laid on the bed. I couldn't catch my breath for two or three hours. I'm having shortness of breath, so I called the ambulance. They’re like, “What happened?” 

“I tried to take a shower.”

“You're overexerting yourself. You have to take it easy. You know, you're just coming through something very traumatic.”

At that time, it’s still not clicking. I tell the doctor at the facility what happened. He goes, “You're lucky to be alive.” 

“So I really could have died?” 

“Yeah, you could have died. You should have died with all the underlying conditions you’ve got.” So, now I’m taking it more seriously. 

But I'm still going in and out of these facilities and not really figuring out what's going on.

They went ahead and did an EGD to see if any more damage happened in my stomach post-Covid. They found I had erosion on my stomach, my stomach lining wasn't so great, and inflammation on my stomach because I have chronic gastritis.

And then, they ask me to follow up with my primary care physician. When you have symptoms, you can't see your primary care physician. They don't allow you to. They tell you if you have any symptoms to stay home. So my only help was going back and forth to the E.R. trying to get answers. I couldn't go to a specialist.

I went back a week later, and they did the CAT scan and an X-ray. At this point, I've done so many x-rays and CAT scans, I'm thinking I'm going to turn into the x-man; I’m going to be like radioactive or something. This time they come back different. They told me that my lungs were like shattered glass. Now, that's what they used to tell you when you had Covid. But my lungs came back looking like that, but they tell me I don't have it. So how are my lungs coming back looking like shattered glass, but I don't have Covid?. They said they don't know.

That's when they hospitalized me for this last time. They started giving me steroids again and started me on some antibiotics. I started itching everywhere. My hands turned red. So they ended up giving me some Benadryl because they found I had adverse effects to the antibiotic. And then they put me on a different one. They treated me for seven or eight days. They put a red bracelet that tells you not to move and not to get out without having a nurse available.

They started searching for a rehabilitation facility to put me in because they felt like I needed further treatment. They found this place, and they transported me here. This is my third week being here. They have a better understanding of people that deal with Covid.

I've been doing physical therapy four or five days a week on the days I can actually do it. I've been in constant pain, and I've been on oxygen since I've been here. I'm the youngest person here. My roommate before this was 90. My roommate now is 88 years old.

They’ve been doing four or five breathing treatments per day. And they just got to the point that today they said that I didn't have to do them anymore. Now it's just kind of like a waiting game. They're trying to get my endurance and stuff up and just continue to treat me.

When someone tells you that you could have died or you almost died, it makes you start taking things very seriously, looking at life differently. I truly believe that the Lord told me that the only reason I'm alive is because he kept me alive for something, for a purpose. And for the first time in my life, I realized that I don't have control over my life. Once you hear when you're lying in bed in pain that you can't move, that you're having all these frustrations, all these complications, and you hear a voice tell you, “The only way you're going to die is If I withdraw my breath from your lungs” and “I created you for a time as this.” It got really real for me. Even though I've been walking with the Lord for ten years, it wasn’t until I got Covid that I actually forgave my father for the stuff that happened with my mom. I forgave everyone. If I'm going to die, I want to make sure I go to heaven. I want to make sure that I'm not eternally separated from God. And I want to make sure my heart is right. Because when I was in the hospital, I never thought I was going to see my family again. 

Even though I knew it was real. I don't even think I had as much compassion concerning COVID until I got COVID. Because I felt like, well, you know, I had a mask on, but I had a mask on, and  I still got COVID.

So it's been quite a journey. I'm anxious to get back to doing what I've been doing.