Covid gave me a second chance

I’m a stay-at-home dad and take care of our two young sons. My wife is a nurse who was working in a Covid unit when cases were overflowing, and PPE for staff was limited. I caught Covid from her before she showed any symptoms. She recovered quickly, but my condition got worse and worse.

It became difficult for me to breathe, and I felt confused and helpless. I was trying to get air into my lungs, but it wasn’t working. I realized that this virus was not going away, and my condition was serious. I needed to go to the hospital.

I went to the ER, thinking I would get out quickly. A CT scan revealed that I had pneumonia, and I was admitted. I spent nine days in the hospital.

While this was happening, my wife was quarantined at home, worrying about me. Our sons were staying with their grandparents, the first time the boys had been apart from me since they’d been born. When my wife returned to work and went to care for me in the Covid unit, my lungs had deteriorated. I was transferred to the ICU and put on bypass to ease my breathing. My wife was afraid that I was dying.

I was.

I felt isolated and alone. I kept thinking, just one more breath. After three days in the ICU, breathing became easier, and I was transferred back to the Covid unit. My mental acuity slowly came back, and I realized how critical my condition had been. 

I’d had fever and chills, sore throat, had a strange sense of taste, and been unable to eat. I’d lost my sense of smell, had increased heart rate, pneumonia, and difficulty breathing. I knew I was overweight but then found out that I was diabetic and had sleep apnea. I was given a wide array of drugs and hallucinated at times. I kept feeling the presence of a foreboding creature that reached out with tentacles into all the Covid patient rooms. I thought it was death.

I lay in my hospital bed, fearful and anxious.

But, slowly, I recovered. After nine days, I was sent home. I felt free again, glad to be alive, but I was in quarantine. My wife was working full-time at the hospital and only came home to sleep. My boys had to stay with their grandparents. I felt isolated and alone. I decided to reach out and tell my story through social media. The positive response I received gave me strength as I worked to recover my own well-being.

As I shared my story as open and raw as I could with others, I saw that it was helping them deal with their own Covid challenges. I think there’s a stigma over being a Covid survivor. People just don’t know how to deal with many facets of Covid; it’s a disease unlike anything most people have known in their lives. But when you survive a pandemic, you’re a hero, and you’re a survivor who has lost everything.

Although sharing my story has made Covid real for non-believers, I am troubled by the incidents of hate leveled at Asian Americans based on misleading information. I am an Asian American who did not cause the Covid pandemic. My wife, a Filipino American nurse, works to save Covid patients. I want Asian Americans to know they are not alone; my story is their story.

I’ve been inspired to explore the feelings and dreams resulting from my Covid experience. In my journals, I’ve written about and sketched over eighty different feelings, from sad to angry to depressed to anxious and happy. Before Covid, I worked in film production, helping others tell their stories. I really enjoyed this, but Covid brought the realization that it was important for me to tell my own story. This is my new life focus.