I spent 3 days in the furnace underbelly of the coronavirus, and I realized that the healthcare system we rely so heavily upon may never be the same.
“However, as bad as things were, the worst was yet to come, for germs would kill more people than bullets. By the time that last fever broke and the last quarantine sign came down, the world had lost 3–5% of its population.”― Charles River Editors, The 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic: The History and Legacy of the World’s Deadliest Influenza Outbreak
Fever
In October 2020, I spent three days isolated in a major hospital’s COVID-19 unit.
And I never had the virus.
I tested negative four times in those three days (one of those tests was an antibody test). Why I was there is not as much of a mystery. I was very sick, and I witnessed a healthcare system in peril.
It began with a mild fever on a Monday afternoon. By Monday night, the fever had risen to 103.5 degrees. There were no symptoms, other than mild dysentery.
By Tuesday, I was struggling to control the fever with acetaminophen and Motrin (I’m usually an advocate of starving a fever, but at 104 the brain begins to boil).
Tuesday night my body temperature reached 104.2 degrees, and the fever reducers only lowered the temperature temporarily before it spiked again.
By Wednesday morning, my bed linen was soaked in sweat.
I was delirious. It was time to go to the ER.
I somehow drove myself to the hospital and barely remember it. I collapsed while filling out forms at the reception desk.
“What other symptoms are you having,” asked the ER doctor when I awoke on a gurney.
I told her none, other than mild diarrhea.
“No chest pain, shortness of breath, aches, or coughing?”
No, I said, none.
They took films of my chest and wrapped me in blankets that were too thin.
I was shaking so badly the nurse could not take my blood pressure or draw blood. I was like an icicle.
“Have you been tested for COVID?”
Yes, I told her, many times, but I also explained how careful I’ve been, how I’ve followed all the rules. COVID was new and everyone was scared. I felt the need to defend myself.
A nurse entered and swiped my nose. I watched the doctor study the X-rays, squinting at the lightboard.
She turned to me.
“The swab test will come back later tonight, but it sure seems like COVID looking at your lungs. You have scarring and some inflammation, typical of the virus.”
Damn, I thought, as careful as I’ve been. I immediately texted friends and family, especially those that I’d been with the past weekend.
There was dinner at that restaurant, outside. Everyone wore masks until our food arrived.
Do they feel okay? Were they experiencing any symptoms? My first concern was them, after all, the doctor just told me it’s probably COVID.
What incompetence to suggest I had the coronavirus without a positive test, I would think later. Now I would frighten friends and family and later have to repeal my diagnosis if it were negative.
Test One: Negative
It was soon two AM and I was still in the cramped ER room waiting for a hospital room on the COVID unit, trying to make myself comfortable on the small bed with my 6-foot frame. They’d wired me up with IV fluids in both arms, and it felt like I had ice in my veins but I stopped shaking.
The IV stream felt like a welcome, cool rain washing over every part of my body. I would learn later I was severely dehydrated and that my kidneys had begun to implode.
I texted the woman that I was dating, sending a picture of me in the hospital garment with wires and IV hoses jutting out of me.
She sent me a text back. “You’re sexy with all those wires. When are you getting out?” Like I was in prison.
A nurse came in and turned the lights on. “I need you to pee in this honey,” she said, handing me a plastic tube with a cap.
“But we just met,” I said. I waited.
“I have to be in the room,” she said, folding her arms.
Doing as I was told, I peed in the bottle.
She clicked the PC monitor on and pulled up my chart. “So the test was negative,” she said. “We’ll have a room soon and the doctor wants to do another test. I’ll be right back with the kit.”
This time when she swiped my nose, I swear she touched my brain, it was so deep and uncomfortable. It was as though they were scraping the COVID out of me to prove it.
It was now 3 AM.
Test 2: Negative
At 3:30 AM they wheeled me up the “tower” or COVID unit, my new home, unknown to me, for the next three long days.
The hallways were full of nurses and doctors in plastic helmets with Plexiglas shields and masks, and they wore protective hazmat suits that rattled when they moved. It was like I had entered a war zone.
After all, I had. The hallways were dark, the widows sealed off completely, and all the rooms had taped doors with signs that read “DO NOT ENTER.”
I just wanted to go to bed, but more paperwork and tests were needed.
Another doctor came in and asked me the same questions.
What were my symptoms? Can I breathe okay? And again, the surprise on his face when I made it clear I had no body aches, cough, or abdominal pain (all the symptoms of COVID).
“So the second test was also negative,” he said. “What we want to do is blood work for antibodies, then tomorrow we’ll schedule a CAT scan to better look at your lungs. How are you feeling?”
“Like hell,” I said. “I’m exhausted.” I asked if my tests were negative, why am I on a COVID floor?
“We just want to be sure. When the other tests come back okay, we’ll move you. For now we need to control your fevers. I’m going to start you on a round of doxycycline IVs. Good thing you came in. Your kidneys were near failure.”
Lovely.
“Don’t get scared. The so-called Spanish influenza is nothing more or less than old-fashioned grippe.” — a Chicago Health Worker, 1918
Another nurse came in to take my blood. “I’ll have to take it from your hand,” she said, “because of the IV.”
“Take all you want,” I said.
Test 3: Negative
It was a restless night, with bouts of broken sleep and visits from nurses to change my IV bag and take my vitals. Still focused on COVID, they’d also strapped a heart monitor on my chest, so every time I turned I had to contend with the IVs in both arms and the bulkiness of the heart monitor.
It seemed like every few minutes there was a message on the intercom.
Stat! Any doctors, we have a Code Blue!
And I knew that most of those alerts were because someone had stopped breathing, I knew that as I slept, people were dying on my floor, drowning in their own lungs.
My fever remained mild and it was still present when I awoke at eight. The phone in my room rang. It was one of the doctors, calling me on my own phone, in my own COVID prison room.
“Mr. Agnew, the blood work came back and your numbers are all above average. You were negative for COVID-19 antibodies.”
“So now what? Can I move? I really don’t want to be isolated on this floor if I’m negative.”
“I understand. These tests — there are so many false positives and negatives.”
“I’ve tested negative three times. If I tested positive, would you have tested me four times?”
“What we want to do is swipe your nose one more time. To be certain. If that comes back negative we will move you.”
What I heard: We don’t know as much as we should about this nasty virus. It is a liability to the hospital to transfer you and possibly expose other patients. I hate all this virus bullshit but I like my job.
So yet again, a nurse appeared in her battle outfit and swiped my nose again, this time keeping the swab pressed against my sinus septum as she twirled the tip like a drill. Must get proof.
While I waited for the CAT scan and my latest swab results, I pressed the nurse on what was wrong with me. “If I don’t have COVID, what’s going on?” I said.
“Though COVID-19 pandemic has affected all sectors directly or indirectly, the crisis is worse on the already overburdened health systems in many countries. A significant level of health service delivery was impacted, especially, during the early times owing to the steady spread of the virus across all settings. It posed challenge on health human resource management, facility utilization and medical supply management.” — Abraham Haileamlak, MD, Professor of Pediatrics and Child Health
She stood in front of her monitor typing through my chart. “Well, you’re clear on sepsis, pneumonia, C. diff, and the common flu. And all your numbers look stellar.”
“So what’s causing the crazy fevers?” I asked.
“Honestly, we don’t know. That’s why we’re keeping you.”
“So why the CAT scan on the lungs?”
She turned to me and shook her head. “The doctors are still focused on COVID. They want a better look at your lungs, for scarring.”
What I heard: Because it must be COVID. And CAT scans are big bucks. We will do whatever we must do to prove that you have COVID. You’re not going anywhere. You are my slave.
At noon, they wheeled me down for the CAT scan. I began to look forward to the tests, because it meant I’d get out of my room for a while.
The enormous, stark white machine droned in the dark room, and the radiologist told me to lie on my back and hold my hands up to my head. She hit some buttons and I slid into the belly of the unit.
“Take a deep breath,” a sexy, recorded voice said, “and hold it.”
I would do whatever she asked.
A blue light whirled above my head and the machine seemed to breathe. “Okay, you can breathe normally,” the voice said.
Test 4: Negative
When I arrived back at my room, the nurse was there waiting to take more blood and my vitals. She also held another IV bag of doxycycline.
I’d already had four bags and it was working. I felt better and my fever was mild. The nurse smiled, “Well, you’re setting a record. Your swab was negative.”
I had asked the doctor earlier if the doxycycline was working, doesn’t that mean I probably don’t have COVID?
Now, with this fourth negative swab, I wondered what he’d say.
“So now what?” I asked the nurse.
“We just have to wait for a few other tests, and I think you can go home tomorrow.”
Finally, I slept better, and a different nurse woke me to take my vitals. No fever. I felt great. And I was hungry.
She stood by the bed after looking over my records on the screen and said, “Why are you still here? I see you had four negative COVID tests.”
I will not allow you to do one more COVID test on me, I thought. “Can I go home today?”
“Sure looks that way. We’re just waiting on two other blood tests.”
At 11, the doctor came in. I’d lost track of how many doctors I’d had while here.
“How are you feeling?” he said. “So your last test was negative and all your other tests were fine. We’re not sure what the infection was, but the antibiotics worked. Do you want to go home today?”
I could have hugged him. He told me I could shower and change and I’d be out in an hour.
Yet as happy as I was to be going home, it bothered me that after all those tests they still had no idea what was wrong with me.
Healthcare Will Never Be the Same
In my three days in the hospital, I realized that how we treat patients has forever changed.
What I saw during my stay was fear, COVID fear.
The nurses, bundled in their hazmat suits and Plexiglas helmets, are afraid every time they step into a patient’s room.
The mantra for treating a patient during this pandemic is to assume COVID, no matter what.
It’s understood that safety for all is most important, yet my question remains: if I had tested positive once, would I have had three more tests to confirm it?
I think the answer to that is no.
Let’s face reality, it’s a lot easier for everyone if a test is positive. The patient has COVID. The patient is isolated, treated, and there is no concern of liability for that patient spreading the virus to other patients or staff in a controlled environment.
It’s probably safe to assume a hospital’s liability is less when they know a patient has COVID.
Had my test been negative in just two tests, and I was placed on the regular wing of the hospital and the test was positive, then what?
It was clear the doctors were laser-focused on me having COVID. Even after four negative tests, they focused on the lungs and heart, two of the most vulnerable organs for the coronavirus.
Why? Liability, and yes, the medical unknowns of this virus.
A Diagnosis at Last
I was fortunate to be treated at a five-star hospital with exceptional staff and a phone in my room and doctors who rang me.
I am grateful for the care I received.
Yet a physician should never assume a virus is present before a test is positive.
And this is another example of COVID fear — they are seeing so many cases and are so overwhelmed that the assumption is COVID. It’s far easier to look at my X-rays and tell me “it looks like COVID,” because it justifies the pandemic in that it follows what medical science has seen with this virus.
Because I presented with some COVID symptoms, but tested negative, I was a liability, and I had to be monitored.
Of course, there is an entire monetary benefit to this pandemic for the hospitals. More tests mean more revenue, yet it also means more staff and more liability.
In 2014, the telemedicine market was worth $50 billion. Now, post-pandemic, it is predicted that number will jump to more than $175 billion. The pandemic is expanding markets and creating new ones.
Yet in all of this chaos of death and birth and rebirth and ingenuity, I could not get an answer as to what infection I had in my body. Not even four world-class doctors could tell me.
Was it because I became lost in the COVID fear storm?
I would get my answer five days after leaving the hospital. Why I was never told, I don’t know.
The number on my phone was a Florida area code. “Mr. Agnew? This is Nurse Halley from the Florida Department of Health. Were you in the hospital recently?”
“Yes. Is this about COVID?”
“No, but I do have lab results to discuss with you and questions I need to ask. Are you aware you had Salmonella poisoning?”
Pause. I almost couldn’t speak. “No.”
“You had enough Salmonella in your system to kill an elephant. You’re lucky. Are you feeling well?”
Indeed, I am.
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