I survived COVID - barely

[Tobias10]

My husband was not feeling well mid-December and two days later I started with his same symptoms - headache, upset stomach, fatigue. We both thought possibly we had picked up a bug from eating out and that it would run it's course. On 12/19 my PCP told me to go to the local ER to get a rapid COVID test. After 4.5 hours in the ER with blood work and a chest x-ray the ER physician told me that I had CHF and I should go home and call my PCP two days later on Monday for follow-up - this made no sense and the nurse practitioner in the ER went over my blood work and said she did not concur with the ER physician's diagnosis. At that time my chest x-ray showed "acute pneumonia" but no one ever mentioned this to me. On 12/24 I called my PCP's office and said I was still not feeling well - I had not gotten dressed for a week and had basically stopped eating because nothing tasted good - my husband was also experiencing loss of taste but we just did not correlate it with COVID for some reason. The PCP ordered me some anti-nausea meds and then told me that my COVID test from 12/19 had come back positive. On 12/25 I was dysfunctional - my kids said I could not walk down the hall straight and I was not forming words correctly. They called an ambulance and I was admitted into the hospital with "acute covid pneumonia". I was asked for permission to put me onto a ventilator if needed and that is the last I remember for at least 3 days. I was put on remdesivir and 80 liters of heated oxygen for several days and the lung specialists told me the next week that they had not expected me to survive. I finally was able to come home after 18 days and am now considered to be "COVID Recovered". Had the ER staff picked up on the possibility that I might have COVID on 12/19 it is very likely that I would not have gotten so close to death that my husband had to ask my girls what funeral arrangements they wanted in case I did not survive. Fortunately, I was not aware just how sick I was until a week later when I was shown my chest x-rays and my lungs were almost completed whited out due to viral pneumonia. I have written to the health care provider for the first hospital I went to so that I can discuss how mismanaged I was on 12/19 but have gotten no response after 10 days - in addition, that same hospital never notified me that my COVID test was positive.