First of all, I must thank God Almighty for granting me the miracle of a new opportunity in life, allowing me to see and be reunited with my great loves, my daughters and my husband, and to have the opportunity to share with you again.
INFINITE GRACES
Dear readers and friends, it has been several weeks of absence from this wonderful platform, I really miss you all very much. My absence was not voluntary, life suddenly surprised me, testing my physical, mental and spiritual strength. Actually, not only mine, but also my family's. They have been very difficult tests that we have passed. I had to live and see in these last 2 months things that I never, not even in my worst nightmares, imagined living, demonstrating with facts the fragility of life.
It all started when I received a call from my sister telling me that my mother had been hospitalized with a pleural effusion. In layman's terms, this is an accumulation of fluid in the space between the lungs and the chest wall. This condition, if left unchecked, causes the lungs to collapse and you can't breathe. In my mom's case, because of her endometrial cancer, her body began to generate and generate fluid. Because the chemotherapy session could not be done for various reasons, including quarantine, the fluid could not be extracted. This was essentially the reason why one of her lungs collapsed due to the pressure exerted by the excess accumulated fluid.
I had to overcome many obstacles, economic, quarantine and lack of transportation, just to name a few, Venezuelans know well what I am talking about, since most of them have to face them every day. Finally, on February 16 (Carnival Tuesday) I managed to travel to the city of Maturin, I never imagined all that I would have to live and that after that experience, I would never be the same woman who had left the city of Barcelona that morning.
My mother was confined in the Manuel Núñez Tovar Hospital, in the city of Maturín, in a room called the Asthmatic Room. It could be said that it was a kind of intermediate therapy room, where patients with very delicate health conditions were kept. Since I arrived at that room, I had to witness with impotence the suffering of my mommy, she was a very active woman and she could no longer walk. The amount of fluid accumulated in her body did not allow her to do anything by herself, my sister and I were in charge of making her clean up on the bed. Those moments were extremely distressing, because any movement caused her a lot of pain. In spite of the fact that the doctors had placed a device that, in theory, should extract the liquid from her lungs, this was not enough. There came a time when so much fluid was retained that blisters began to form, filled with fluid that penetrated the layers of skin. I will always admire her strength, she was a true warrior, incredibly despite the pain and discomfort she never lost her good humor and optimism.
My mom was a being of light, despite her illness she was full of will to live, wherever she went she won people over, the nurses adored her. She always greeted them with a smile or a comment that made their day, no matter how many times she was pricked in order to give her the IV through which the intravenous treatment was given. However, her suffering was notorious, every movement left her exhausted. Maybe it sounds terrible to some people, but seeing my mother's suffering, and even though my heart was breaking, I prayed to GOD, that if he could not perform the miracle of saving her, that he would take her with HIM. I had never seen someone suffer so much and yet, she loved life so much, that until her last breath she clung to it impressively.
On the night of February 26th, after a whole day of agony and struggle to hold on to life, my mom lost the battle. In spite of all our efforts, those of the medical staff and nurses, at about 10 p.m. cancer irremediably won and snatched her last breath. With her, a part of my soul died, however, I am left with the consolation that at last her pain is healed. I am sure that she is in a beautiful place, from wherever she is, she takes care of us and where she can finally rest, in the company of her loved ones who left the earthly plane before her.
I remember, that as we left the hospital that night under the gaze of an immense full moon, with our souls filled with pain, impotence and a broken heart. My sister and I thought that the challenge was to mourn our mother, to live our grief and honor her memory, but how far we were from that reality, a new nightmare was just beginning, where our lives would now be at risk. She and I were both suffering from flu-like ailments that, due to the situation we were going through, perhaps at first the adrenaline had not allowed them to fully develop.
The next two days, after our mother's death, were filled with funeral procedures, and the discomfort increased with each passing day. In my case, the fever never went below 40°C, but, no way, we had to claim our mother's body in the morgue, make the arrangements at the funeral home and then cremation. It was all very painful and left me scarred for the rest of my life. We had to draw strength from our grief, because there was no time to cry, we had to solve everything ourselves. We also had no time to worry about our ailments, but we always kept biosecurity measures to the maximum. Well, it was part of our daily routine, just as we had been doing, since we were taking care of an oncology patient. Moreover, because we knew that the hospital was full of Covid-19 patients and the sanitary control was not rigorous at all, so we had a high probability of having contracted the virus.
One day after cremating my mom, even though she did not have the symptoms that normally occur when you have covid-19, as a precaution, my sister and brother-in-law went to the health care center at her work. What they were able to get done was the rapid screening test for Covid-19, the PCR or Nasal Swab they did not want to do. By the way, it is worth mentioning that what they did, as we say here in Venezuela, was a "scolding teeth" test. The doctors said that the symptoms did not coincide, they clung to the fact that they did not present the common symptoms of coronavirus. We never had a dry cough, on the contrary, we had phlegm, besides, we did not lose our sense of smell or taste, nor did we have respiratory difficulties, the only thing that did coincide was the very high fever and the muscular pains.
The tests were negative, and since the presence of the virus had not been confirmed, the doctors prescribed treatment for the mild respiratory infection, which was evident in the X-rays. Fortunately, for us, the treatment included antibiotics, which stopped the progress a little. As we did not trust the results, because we had read that this test can be ineffective in the first stage of the virus, yielding a false negative. We decided to wait a few days to repeat the test, of course, without stopping the treatment, since we could not take any risk.
That same week, on Friday, March 5, as the symptoms were still present, my sister, my brother-in-law, my nephew and I went straight to the hospital where my mother had been confined. This hospital is the pilot center for the care of Covid-19 patients in the state of Monagas. SATRAMO, which is the main unit for screening, care and control of Covid-19 patients, is located there. The doctor, upon reviewing our X-rays and laboratory tests, immediately indicated that we were candidates for the test. However, since we were in the same house, he only chose me for the PCR test; if I was positive, everyone was positive.
After an interminable 2 and a half hours of waiting we got our results, and as we had feared our suspicions became a terrible reality WE HAD COVID-19. The viral load that my results showed was very high, however, according to the lab tests and x-rays we were all apparently still stable. Our only concern was that my hemoglobin was very low, however, the doctor did not give it much importance. He did change our treatment regimen to one that included stronger antibiotics, because the antibiotics we were taking covered a very limited spectrum. The presence of fever, although at a lower temperature, indicated that the previous regimen was not working. She also gave us an appointment to come back for a follow-up in 4 days, to review our evolution.
As indicated by the doctor, on March 9 we returned to the control, by that time the symptoms had subsided, mainly the fever. Although, in my particular case, I only had a slight fever at night, but otherwise, I felt much better, although it seemed like laziness. Strangely, I was falling asleep all the time, everywhere, something that of course, was not normal for me. The doctor checked all of us, this time we also took my dad, who is diabetic and suffers from Parkinson's. Thank God he had only had a slight fever up to that moment. Apparently we were all stable and responding well to treatment, although my sister was still very concerned about my hemoglobin levels. My hemoglobin was still dropping, in the span of 4 days it had gone from 10.2 to 8.7, however, the doctor was still not paying much attention to it.
As the virus was apparently still stable, just for control, the doctor, once the physical examination was finished, gave us the orders to have new X-rays. Since we could have the X-rays done at the hospital, we walked to the Radiology Department. We could not wait, because the doctor told us that that same day he had to compare the new X-rays with the previous ones, besides verifying my dad's condition, since it was his first appointment. To get there, we had to walk a little, because of my dad's basic pathologies they took him in a wheelchair, my sister and I of course walked. When we arrived at the Radiology area, I noticed that I was a little tired, finally they took the X-rays, in my case, the pulmonary compromise had advanced significantly, taking into account the short time.
In my previous x-rays there were only a few lung lesions, now almost half of my two lungs were compromised, it had turned into a bilateral pneumonia. As we were walking back to the office for the doctor to look at the new X-rays, I told my sister to go on with my dad, that I was going to walk slower, because I was feeling a little tired. As I was walking back, I started to feel worse and worse, I started to see blurry, it was hard to breathe and the tiredness almost didn't let me walk. As I could, I managed to get to the parking lot in front of SATRAMO, my sister was already there and when she saw me stumbling she ran to catch me, while shouting to the doctor to run, I was collapsing.
Luckily, my sister and the doctor managed to catch me before I fell long and hard in the parking lot and got me into the office. When they measured my oxygen saturation level, it was below 90, I don't remember exactly how low the measurement was, I remember that I couldn't think straight. But the truth was that upon seeing her, the doctor immediately said that I could not go home, that I had to stay in the hospital. Of course, my immediate response was "... no doctor, I cannot stay here hospitalized...", to which the doctor replied that I should thank God that the collapse had happened there and not somewhere else.
Upon comparing the X-rays and reviewing the symptoms, he explained to us that the aggressiveness of the virus unequivocally indicated that the virus we had contracted was the Brazilian variant of Covid-19. For some reason, in my case, unlike the rest of my relatives, my body was not responding adequately to oral treatment, so it had to be changed to intravenous. In addition, due to the collapse I had just suffered, I needed to be permanently supplied with oxygen, because I was at risk of suffering a pulmonary thrombus and therefore sudden death. Thus began a new stage of the nightmare, but as the story is already very long, for now I will leave it here and soon I will tell you how the next 19 days of hospitalization and my subsequent recovery went.
Please, do not stop taking care of yourselves, comply with all the biosecurity measures, from my own experience I can assure you that Covid-19 is not just another flu, it is something very serious. So, if you have symptoms such as fever, muscle aches, headache, flu-like discomfort, with or without phlegm, fatigue and even diarrhea. Consult your doctor, it is better to be safe than sorry. God Bless you.
Content and photographs of my intellectual property
Technical information
Camera: Honor Cell Phone Model DUAL-LX3
Lens: DUAL-LX3
Lighting: Natural Light
Location: Maturin, Monagas State, Venezuela
Gracias a Dios, pudiste recuperarte del virus, Dios en su infinita misericordia les ayude a sobrellevar la pérdida de tu mamita y que desde ese lugar especial ella les envía su bendición...