Tim

ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA — November 17, 2020: We had locked down the state, and they opened it up way too early. I'm a performer. I'm a comedy magician. I had two birthday parties booked, one on a Friday and one on a Saturday.  The one was at a pretty big house with only a few kids, so it wasn't real close quarters. That was on a Friday. The Saturday show was in a very small apartment, and it was just wall-to-wall kids. There had to be at least 30 kids and probably about 10 or 12 adults in this little tiny apartment. So it could have been both places where I contracted it. Or, if it's a 14 day incubation period, it could have been at the grocery store. You know, I touched the canned goods or whatever, who knows? I manifested symptoms 48 hours after the birthday parties.

On Monday morning, I woke up with a bad headache, feverish, and a little dry cough caused by the sinus drip and then extreme fatigue. It just continued to get worse.

9 days later, I just said I'm not getting better, so I need to go to the ER. I was just so wiped out. A fatigue so severe that I had never felt before. I went through this all alone, basically. After 8 days and not getting better,  I couldn't care for myself anymore. I really couldn't move. So I called the ambulance.

The paramedics were so compassionate. They stopped outside and knocked on the door.  I said, “I suspect I have covid,”  so they put full PPE on before they entered the house. They asked me the questions, and they took me to a hospital at that point. It was a forty-five-minute wait in the ambulance once I got there.  We were having a surge in Tampa Bay and the hospitals were overwhelmed. One had diverted already. This meant that their ER couldn’t handle any more cases. Then, they did all these tests, including a Covid test, and said, “We'll know the results in 48 hours. If you're positive, we'll call you.” 

They didn't call me, but I was smart enough to go into my online patient portal. I found out I was positive. But I pretty much knew or at least suspected it. . But when you get that diagnosis, and it settles in, there's something in your brain that clicks.. Maybe it's a fear mechanism; I don't know. A couple of hours later, my breathing got heavy. They said, “If your breathing gets difficult, call.” So, I called the paramedics again, and this is the part that upset me. 

The paramedic gave me a hard time. When they came in, I said, “I'm covid positive,” so they put the full PPE on and one of them came in kind of with an attitude. I said, “I can't care for myself.” I told the paramedic that the ER doctor had   told me to come back if I cannot take care of myself and I can't. They took me, but they gave me a hard time. And, honestly, the hospital just gave me a hard time. In hindsight, I understand why. The surge had overwhelmed the healthcare system where I lived. In a pandemic, they had to be selective and take only the sickest patients who had life-threatening symptoms. 

I was taken to the emergency room, and they did the full battery of tests again. This time the E.R. the doctor saw pneumonia in my lungs. This was life-threatening so that was why they admitted me,  And they sent me to a Covid unit. 

I slept in the E.R. till about three-thirty in the morning because they didn't have any beds available. They had one covid unit with 12 beds. I had to convince them to keep me because they only wanted to take the most severe cases, but had I not stayed there, I probably would have died. The pneumonia was worsening. 

For about an hour when I was just so sick, and I was having trouble breathing, I thought this could be the end. So I was talking to myself and talking to my God. And I was comfortable with it. I wasn't afraid of “it” anymore. “It” means death. I knew I didn’t have any control. I knew my life was in my caregiver’s and God’s hands. When you get comfortable with that, it’s a lot easier to focus on letting the doctors and nurses do their job.  

I've been in recovery from alcoholism for 20 years. I learned a long time ago that I don't have control past the end of my nose, only my reaction to things. Here I am in a hospital bed flat on my back with a virus that there's no cure for and they don't know anything about. They're doing the best they can to take care of the symptoms. 

So I surrender to it and say, “OK, if it's my time, it's cool.” And I was just fine with it. I just made peace with the fact that if I'm going to die, I'm going to die. I've had a life well-lived. 

So I looked at that with gratitude, and I was comfortable with, OK, if I'm going to die, I'm going to die. But for some reason, I was spared.  

They tried to take care of symptomatology because they had no cure for the virus, so they just keep the symptoms in line -- at least tamp down the symptoms so your body can rid itself of the virus. They gave me the pneumonia shot and a shot of heavy-duty antibiotics as well as an oral Z-pak. 

But, my breathing continued to get heavy, so they brought in the pulmonologist, who really saved my life. 

I have Tourette syndrome, so I don't respond well to steroids. It has a stimulant effect and I just get really hyper. They gave me an IV dose of dexamethasone, which, as I understand, is a step above prednisone, a hardcore steroid, which I'm not crazy about.  But the bottom line is, it saved my life. So they gave that to me, and I fell asleep for two hours. This shocked me. Normally a drug like this would make the TS go ballistic. I was so sick that I went the other way and slept. When I woke up, my breathing was just much better. It does however have the side effect of elevating blood sugar to very high levels so they had to balance that out with an IV of insulin. Now THAT stimulated me for about 4 hours! And they had to give me another round of it the next day. In addition, I would get a shot in the abdomen daily (not sure of what it was, some sort of anticoagulant drug) to prevent blood clots. 

But the dexamethasone is what really saved my life. 

Here’s why: when you get a severe case of Covid, your immune system will go into overdrive. It's kind of like lupus and attacks its own cells. The dexamethasone tamps down the immune system. Kind of counterintuitive, but it makes the immune system work normally and also reduces the inflammation in my lungs. The antibiotics took care of the pneumonia. And, because the immune system was working normally, and I was in relatively good health other than the COPD, my immune system was able to get rid of the virus and I started getting better.

 I'm one of the really, really lucky ones. I'm blessed because I don't have those residual effects of Covid aside from some off and on fatigue known as post-viral syndrome. When you're on the brink of death like that, you get a different perspective on a lot of things. I have a completely different perspective on life today. I know what’s important and I know what's not important. 

Tim has written a book about his experience. You can order it here.