Technically, Alfredo Hernandez doesn’t have the virus anymore.
But he’s still sick.
The 55-year-old first entered the hospital March 28 testing positive for the then-emergent novel coronavirus. The JBS employee believes he was among the first at the Greeley beef facility to contract the virus in the early days of the breakout that eventually shuttered the plant for two weeks.
Hernandez, his wife, Rosario said, was in the hospital for nine days, with ice packs on his body to break a fever, before being discharged April 5.
But, while Alfredo is certainly better off today than he was exactly four months earlier, he’s still in pretty bad shape.
“Lungs haven’t gotten better,” Rosario Hernandez said. “Pulmonary doctor ran a bunch of tests to check for blood clots in the lungs and heart. He’s never had heart problems, this is all related to the virus. Never had lung problems, heart problems, a little high blood pressure, but that’s it. Now he gets headaches if his blood pressure is too high. It was low for a while, they adjusted his medication. But he’s still recovering.”
Rosario Hernandez says her husband struggles to sleep, feeling as if his whole body is itching.
“He’s not positive for the virus,” she said. “He already got tested — before he went to the pulmonary doctor he had to test negative, and they tested him and he came back negative. But he can’t sleep. It’s like a mental issue. He feels like there are mosquitos flying around his whole body and biting him. He goes, ‘Aren’t those mosquitos biting you?’ I say no. He sprays mosquito spray so he can sleep. It’s affected him.”
Alfredo is still on oxygen 24 hours a day, his wife said. Never a smoker and not otherwise in any higher-risk categories, he can barely leave the house.
“We’ll go for a drive somewhere and he’ll get nauseated and sick,” Rosario Hernandez said. “He checks his oxygen level daily, his blood pressure off and on all day. Maybe he’s feeling OK and takes (the oxygen) off for a little while, then he has to put it back on. He can’t do anything because he’ll be out of breath.”
Doctors are struggling to determine what exactly is wrong with Alfredo and others like him as this phase of the pandemic remains relatively new to physicians and scientists.
“Given the novel nature of this, it’s fascinating to be learning every day about the acute effects,” said Dr. Mark Wallace, Sunrise Community Health’s Chief Clinical Officer and the former director of Weld County health department. “What do people face when they’re acutely ill? And at the same time, these folks who were sick enough to be hospitalized, the clinicians are seeing rates of side effects that are long term that are unusual. It’s pretty broad.”
Wallace said doctors are seeing COVID-19 patients suffering everything from blood clotting and embolisms to fatigue and shortness of breath in longer-lasting cases than, for example, a standard influenza diagnosis.
“If the blood clots go to another organ — they’re noticing clots affecting kidneys, for example, and there’s kidney failure. Then you’re talking about things like dialysis,” Wallace said. “Things are beginning to pop up. Heart damage, signs of inflammation of the cardiac muscle tissue that can lead to scarring, and that has long-lasting effects on folks like increasing the risk for heart attack.
“We’re seeing heart damage, lung damage, even some neurological symptoms. People present with headaches, loss of taste and smell. That tweaks a clinician’s interest.”
Wallace, who also added weakness, numbness and even confusion and loss of neurologic function to the list of post-acute illness symptoms from the virus, said the struggle in diagnosis and treatment with this still very new virus is a lack of definitive studies off of which to work.
“We’re going to begin to see more literature,” he said. “Some articles have come out from early experiences, and have shown signs of heart damage in about 19% of a certain group. That’s not insignificant. We were first coming into this when China was at a different stage, with more cases they could look back on, (China’s) early studies back in January weren’t quite as high, I think maybe 12% of patients they’d studied had cardiovascular damage. Still not insignificant.”
Wallace said the emerging concern was what is being seen in younger folks who contract the virus. While the early concerns about COVID-19 focused on older and more risky individuals, younger folks have begun, Wallace said, to see some serious issues with the virus.
“In this second wave, we’re hearing reports about it affecting younger people in a more severe way with folks in their 20s and 30s being hospitalized,” Wallace said. “It’ll be fascinating to have these studies come out where somehow it might be a little switched and is now affecting younger people. It’s hard to know without publications, but is it because young people are out doing things? Regardless, if they’re still ending up having serious enough disease to be hospitalized, if you’re 30? And 10 to 20% of folks have signs of cardiac damage? That’s something to deal with long term. A lot of clinical people are really baffled.”
Hernandez, for his part, is not that young, but he’s not that old, either. No matter what his risk factors, the longtime beef plant worker is struggling.
“He eats, but his appetite isn’t the same,” Rosario Hernandez said. “Eats about twice a day, a good meal, but other than that, it’s not like before. He worries, he has anxiety and gets nervous. He thinks a lot about what’s going to happen if he’ll be like this forever.”
"still" - Google News
August 05, 2020 at 07:00AM
https://ift.tt/2PmAOnu
Months after hospitalization, COVID-19 still taking toll on Greeley family - Greeley Tribune
"still" - Google News
https://ift.tt/35pEmfO
https://ift.tt/2YsogAP
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Months after hospitalization, COVID-19 still taking toll on Greeley family - Greeley Tribune"
Post a Comment