When COVID-19 Hits Home: When Mom and Dad Both Get Sick

EMS World is asking first responders and healthcare workers who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 to talk about their experiences battling the virus. If you or someone you know in the field has a story to share, email us at editor@emsworld.com. Your story will remain anonymous if you so choose. 

Here are excerpts from one Virginia paramedic’s Facebook entries logging the course of his illness.

4/18: Day 4

The grapevine in my medical community has been working really fast here recently, so it’s time for a general announcement. I tested positive for Covid-19. I am a frontline healthcare worker and have been seeing patients from the beginning of all of this.

I’m home safe and doing well. I have all the symptoms generally reported except for trouble breathing and loss of smell or taste. My symptoms started very mildly at work Wednesday morning but really became noticeable when I woke up from my post-shift nap that afternoon. 

I’d like to express my gratitude in the outpouring of support from my coworkers at Alexandria Fire and colleagues at Alexandria Hospital. Also, thanks to my in-laws who have had my 11- and 7 year-old kids living with them for weeks in anticipation of one of us getting sick. And an extreme thank you to my lovely wife who has been bringing me food and entertaining the baby so I can stay isolated.

4/20: Day 6

Still alive and sort of well. All my symptoms are mild and controlled with medication. Tylenol was doing very little for my temperature, but alternating ibuprofen and Tylenol q6 is keeping it down. Days 2-3 my temperature spiked and I got really strong myalgias in the middle of the night that woke me up. I slept much better the last two nights and didn’t wake up with extreme chills, aches or needing to re-dose medicine. I consider that a win.

4/22: Day 8

Week two of COVID-19 is much less pleasant than week one. Nausea is keeping me up overnight. I’m dropping the ibuprofen because I’m pretty sure it was irritating my stomach and making that worse. Tylenol is doing okay with controlling fever but the q6 dosing is making my temperature bounce up and down versus q4 alternating. Zofran is helping me force-eat some, but it’s still pretty unpleasant.

Cough is a bit more acute now, with some coughing fits hitting me now and then. I get a little short of breath on exertion. Our pulse ox arrived yesterday. I have the occasional dip to the low 90s, but they come right back up by breathing more.

But the worst of everything is that my wife became symptomatic Sunday and got her positive results today. From the timing it was likely an exposure from me prior to becoming symptomatic last week (as opposed to her being exposed separately at her work or after I developed symptoms). The upside is now isolation is pretty meaningless, at least inside the house. The downside is now I have to help with baby E because my wife is sick and that wears me out.

4/23: Day 9

Worsening cough (some truly epic fits I tell you), exertional dyspnea, and some low sats brought me to urgent care for evaluation today. Just had my blood work and chest X-ray done. My sats were stubbornly normal when they put me on and only dropped from walking right as I was sitting down. Luckily, I saw the 87% reading because it was right after the nurse stopped looking through the door.

I haven’t had fever or myalgias since yesterday and haven’t needed Tylenol since midnight. The nausea has tapered off, replaced by some truly joyous GI upset and diarrhea. Still not a whole lot of appetite, but at least I can eat now.

This isn’t where I wanted to be today but it’s good that my wife pushed me to get checked. I’m hoping to stay for tests and observation before heading home. Time will tell.

4/23: Day 9, Entry 2

I’m being admitted. I argued against ambulance transport until my lovely wife told me to shut up and do what I’m told (in a nice way). I understand why—you know, desaturating while driving and then crashing being an undesirable outcome. On the one hand, it’s a burden issue: I’m supposed to be a resource helping people, not a person using resources. Further, I don’t want to expose anyone else or force the use of PPE where unnecessary. I don’t have to be logical, I’m hypoxic!

Still having some baseline room air sat drops to the mid-upper 80s. I’ve been laying prone for a while on a truly horrendous pillow. The proning helps increase my sats with fewer drops and less coughing. The pillow makes my arm fall asleep, because it made some poor life choices when it decided to become a pillow. It’s pillow-shaped but offers about as much actual support as air unconstrained by any physical medium.

The continued offers of assistance and positive thoughts are well-appreciated. Currently I’m being taken care of *glares at pillow* and my wife is maintaining at home.

4/25: Day 11

Slept reasonably last night owing in part to the actual pillow included in the bag my wonderful coworker dropped off for me yesterday. Also, I was able to speak with the respiratory therapist last night about CPAP. The first night, they came in at 0300, slapped everything together, shoved it in my face and turned it on. Didn’t fit well, the pressure was so high it made my ears pop and I had trouble breathing against it because of the multiple viral filters for exhalation.

I was hopeful yesterday morning when the doctor said I could use my own CPAP (yay), but then saddened when the respiratory therapist shot that down in the evening (boo). They’re not approving home CPAP units because their required filtration setup at the moment has a lot of rigid plastic off the mask. It also means I can’t lay prone for comfort with their mask on. Yesterday the respiratory therapist got me an appropriately sized mask and sat with me to test some pressure settings to see what felt best.

My wife was admitted last night as well. E is staying with her Aunt A, and Aunt T is helping shuttle things over for her. E is clearly in good spirits and not feeling overtly abandoned just yet.

4/26: Day 12

I’m home.

We now have two oxygen concentrators (the second is for my wife once she comes home) and no less than 16 oxygen tanks. I’m planning a shower followed by some sweet, sweet sleep with my CPAP machine and no one coming in to take my vitals or blood. I’m still having some dizziness, but really that’s the strongest symptom I have left.

4/28: Day 14

Had a night of 10+ hours of sleep. Definitely something which can’t be achieved in the hospital with the interruptions of vitals, lab draws and doctors.

O2 sats remain fine at home and no fevers. I’ve just been using Zofran for nausea and cough medicine to help me sleep. The dizziness remains. About five minutes is all I have to be upright before getting a strong urge to sit and rest.

Lung capacity is a big improvement. I’ve been using my little lung exerciser/torture device. I can generally get through an entire exercise without it developing into coughing fits now, so it definitely helps me improve volume usage. It’s easy to fall into a pattern of breathing just shallow enough to not trigger a cough. That way lies the dark side of pneumonia.

4/29: Day 15

Incremental improvements continue. I still don’t feel like being up for more than five minutes at a time, even on oxygen. A couple of trips downstairs to the laundry room firmly convinced me I need a planned break before coming back upstairs. Dizziness continues when I’m up, but again, slight improvements. Today I’m rocking a sweet headache. Tylenol isn’t touching it, so today I’ll give ibuprofen a try. I’ve been off caffeine for two weeks so I should be past withdrawals at this point.

All of that aside, my wife is coming home today! Finally started an improving trend in her labs after five days of being admitted and no fevers for a couple days.

My work partner did test positive. He’s having all the symptoms I was having at day seven, mitigated by medicine. My concern is that he’s right at the point at which I went to the hospital, so we want to make sure he doesn’t get sick quickly.

4/30: Day 16

Dizziness, nausea, and lack of stamina continue to decrease. Absolutely love the human contact of another recovering COVID person next to me... just being able to hold someone’s hand or be in the same room with someone who isn’t masked up is pretty amazing.

5/07: Day 23

Almost completely back to normal. The weeklong sinus headache finally gave up the ghost yesterday. Loving that because it was like a never-ending story, but with no luck dragon. I’ve been taking E on her daily walks to gauge my stamina. My loop is two miles and I’ve been completing it more easily every day. I even left the just-in-case oxygen bottle behind today.

Still waiting to hear what my return to work requirements are going to be, but hopefully I’ll be back up and running in the next week and a half.

5/19: Day 35

I haven’t coughed in about two days. I have a phone appointment with occupational health tomorrow afternoon so I’m hoping to get cleared for return to duty. Not that I don’t love being my kids’ executive assistant and organizing all of their tasks, conference calls, etc. It’s just that a plane crashing into a bus filled with hemophiliac nuns sounds a little easier at this point. Fingers crossed for tomorrow.

Rémi Howell is a paramedic with the City of Alexandria Fire Department outside of Washington, D.C. His 23-year career in EMS has taken him to nine departments in Virginia and North Carolina, ranging from rural volunteer to urban high volume and inter-facility critical care. 

These Facebook posts have been condensed and lightly edited for brevity and clarity.