Susan makes her way out of her house and onto the back porch, slowly but surely, using her walker. She’s hooked up to an oxygen tank that allows her to breathe easier as she continues to recover from her illness. She says her walking and breathing are getting better every day.
She takes a seat at the table with her husband, Dan.
As she goes to sit down, her oxygen tube gets tangled up, so Dan fixes it for her.
Now they’re ready to talk about Susan’s experiences of suffering from and ultimately fighting off COVID-19.
“I just hope nobody else gets it, because that’s the scariest thing I ever went through,” Susan said.
Susan spent 22 days on a ventilator at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh after she started having trouble breathing back in July.
“I got down (to Magee-Womens Hospital) and got out of the helicopter and I was really having trouble breathing,” Susan said. “When you’re having trouble breathing, you try to breathe right but that’s all you can do. You can’t sleep, you can’t eat, you just watch that monitor and hope you can keep breathing.”
“The scariest part is not having enough oxygen when you think you should have enough,” she added.
Susan said by her second night in the hospital, she had come to terms with possibly never leaving that hospital room.
“When I was pretty sure they were going to intubate me, I was like ‘I’m done.’ People usually don’t come back from intubation,” she said. “But also I’m so tired of fighting the breathing, but that’s how it has to be.”
“IT LOOKED LIKE TORTURE TO ME.”
Dan made the trip to Pittsburgh almost every day to see his wife, who was tied down to a hospital bed with a tube down her throat, all while still being conscious.
Susan had to be tied down to the hospital bed so she couldn’t take the tube out.
“When I walked in and saw that she was awake… it looked like torture to me,” Dan said.
“It was,” Susan agreed.
She couldn’t talk, she couldn’t move, she was stuck, which was not only constricting but also made communication extremely frustrating. Even something as simple as telling a nurse that her nose was itchy became a frustrating process.
“Even if my arms weren’t tied down, they wouldn’t go where I wanted them to,” Susan said.
Susan said one of the worst parts of the entire experience were the delusions that came with the drugs and the sickness.
“It was just all ugly, scary stuff,” she said.
It was difficult for her to stay with reality and, even now, sometimes has a hard time remembering exactly what happened at the hospital. It got especially bad when the doctors started taking Susan off the medications and she began to fight with reality.
“There were times that I’d get a call from the hospital where she was in delirium so bad that they wanted me to FaceTime her to get her calmed down,” Dan said.
“A TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE SITUATION.”
Dan and Susan started dating in junior high school and have been together for upwards of 55 years, married for 48.
“To see her going through this was horrendous to say the least,” Dan said. “I think I cried more in those first few weeks than I ever cried in my whole life.”
“It was a feeling of helplessness, watching your wife being put through what I call torture,” he added.
The situation took an emotional toll on Dan and the rest of his family. Dan said leaving the hospital every day was “disheartening,” and coming home to see all her quilts and artwork that they have on display in their house just made things even more difficult.
“It was the worst thing I ever went through in my entire life,” Dan said. “It was a terrible, terrible, terrible situation.”
HOSPITAL VISITS
Dan recalled the struggles and frustrations of trying to visit his wife in the hospital during this process.
At first, he was not allowed to visit her at all.
Once she was intubated, he was allowed to visit for just an hour before the nurses would ask him to leave because of hospital policy.
“It would just infuriate me,” Dan said, but understood the procedure.
“He’d drive two hours down, stay an hour and then have to go home,” Susan said.
Eventually, once Susan’s health started to improve, the hospital allowed Dan to visit for as long as he wanted.
Susan was kept in a negative-pressure room, meaning that none of the air from inside the room would come out. In order to visit with Susan, Dan had to get dressed up in all the protective equipment: a gown, two sets of gloves, a hat, a face mask and a face shield.
Once Susan completely fought off the virus, Dan only had to wear a face mask for visits.
SUSAN’S RECOVERY
The relief of being home could be seen in Susan’s eyes and heard in her voice.
“I’m so happy to be out of that room and into nature and into my home that I’m used to,” Susan said, mentioning her appreciation for the hospital staff.
“Once she lost her fever, you could see improvements day by day,” Dan said. “Since coming home, she’s made huge strides as far as walking, communicating, doing things on her own.”
But Dan said Susan still needs 24/7 care, at least for now.
“They’re saying she should make a full recovery,” Dan said. “I think the only doubt they have right now is her lung capacity and as to whether she’s going to need oxygen for the rest of her life.”
In addition to Susan’s physical recovery from COVID-19, she now has a significant mental battle to fight because of the stress and trauma caused by COVID-19 treatment.
“The first two or three nights (after getting home), I couldn’t watch anything (on TV) for more than two minutes,” Susan said. “I couldn’t do anything because I just kept going to the bad place. Then I got to the point where I said, ‘I’m not going to think about that anymore, I’m just going to stay at the good place.’ So that’s what I’ve been doing.”
Being hooked up to a ventilator for so long has had lasting effects on Susan, where she has trouble with anything getting close to her face. She can’t even wear a mask yet because she starts to feel claustrophobic.
Although her mental health has improved since coming home, sometimes just thinking about the treatment triggers some bad feelings, she said.
“That was almost as bad as all the other stuff,” Susan said of her on-going mental battle.
But even through all the mental and physical struggles:
“I’m very appreciative of being here,” Susan said.
“It’s a miracle,” Dan said.
