Neil

 I felt like I wasn’t being heard.

PORTLAND, OREGON: When I heard about the Covid outbreak in China, I knew it would affect us. I started thinking right away, what are we going to do to protect ourselves?

Cases started rising up in Portland in late February. Portland got shut down on March 14th. Everything closed, service industry employees suddenly had no work. It was total chaos and confusion.

Eventually, there was an uprising of people who wanted the state to reopen. Things began opening up again even though numbers were rising. There was only open-air dining for restaurants and limited capacity for other businesses. We were stuck for months.

In late June, I thought I had allergy symptoms. I awoke one-day sweating and body aches and my condition worsened. I got a Covid test and it came back positive. It was 8 weeks later, in September, when I finally tested negative.

During this time, my blood oxygen level was so low I almost went to the hospital many times. I had fever, chills, chest pains, sore throat, and lost my senses of taste and smell. I experienced vertigo. This was scary, felt like I was falling and couldn’t stop. Sometimes I’d wake up in the morning with my heart racing. Slowly, my condition improved.

My wife did an amazing job caring for me, I couldn’t have had a better nurse. But she was always stressed, worried that my oxygen level would drop and I would have to be taken away to a hospital.

We live so closely together in our small house, we thought my wife would get Covid too. But she tested negative. For 2 months she never showed any symptoms.

When I finally got a negative Covid test, I went back to work. I only lasted a week before being put on leave to recover my health. Being laid off has been difficult, I love to work. 

After 6 months, I feel I’m back to about 85% of what I was before Covid. My circadian rhythms are messed up and I have a hard time sleeping at night. This is very unusual for me. My asthma condition has worsened. Now, I sometimes need to use an inhaler. The doctors say I still have fluid in my lungs, but we’re hoping this condition will go away.

Getting the health care service I need has been a challenge. On many occasions, I was told to go away. I wasn’t okay and I wasn’t being heard. 

It was great when I discovered Covid support groups and found that I wasn’t alone with my health experiences.

Many of my friends were very supportive of my Covid condition. Unfortunately, some of my family members thought it was a hoax. My brain fog made it difficult to talk with them. 

During my Covid recovery, my wife and I have had to deal with other hardships. In December, we lost our home to fire too.

We’re in limbo so we’ve decided to press the reset: button. We’ve decided to move to a quieter, more remote place where we can regain our total family health and tranquility.

This year, I hope our family can regain some sort of “normalcy.”

I hope people understand how important it is to get vaccinated.

I hope that science can provide more answers about Covid mysteries and that by the fall of 2021, the country can be back to normal.

We need to share our Covid survivor stories, for those who have not survived, for others who don’t believe this virus is real and deadly.