NAMBA October 2020 Web.pub

PROPWASH October 2020 15 Allen 90 on water brake dyno The Covid-19 Thing is Real By Al Waters NAMBA Executive Secretary Earlier this year I was contacted by a few model boaters asking if I would share my experience with coming down with Covid -19. As we have seen this past year, there have been a lot of political, economic, and health care decisions made as the result of this worldwide pandemic. I have to go back to Mother’s Day weekend in May when it all started. A time where we were masking in San Diego County and on a “stay at home” order and when there were also protests from people who felt their rights had been violated when it came to wearing masks. Now back to my situation. Just prior to Mother’s Day weekend, my wife Heather and I visited my mom, who is 90 years old, cooking dinner for her. We came back home and our daughter KC Hazen (NAMBA #883) came down from Henderson, Nevada and visited us for the weekend. All was good at that time. Come Monday or Tuesday I felt a harsh cough coming on. Every year for as many years as I could remember, I would always get what I called the 24 hour flu which would occur either at the beginning or end of the flu season. Back in the day when I was working in the grocery stores, I would eat two ma- ple bar donuts and sit in the walk-in freezer for thirty minutes. It was the joke in the industry but it worked for over 20 years. I never had a day of calling in sick for work or even being late for work. I was running a fever but not a high one. I figured that I would just let it run its course as in the past. I discovered that a good friend of mine who I hang out with, who was working from home, had the flu that week also. Now a week had gone by and I am hating life but my friend is fine. I could barely make it walking across the room. I do not want to eat, my body aches, I have zero energy, and I am lying in bed for easily 16-18 hours a day. Its May 19 th , a Tuesday, and I make the phone call to go in to urgent care. They ask me the standard questions over the phone and when said and done, they told me to come right down to emergency. So off I went. The hospital was closed off and provided preliminary check in outside under some canopies. Once I was escorted inside, I was given a room and waited. Blood tests were performed and the next thing I knew, a nurse peeked through the door and informed me I had contracted Covid-19. @#$@*&)! was all I could say. Eventually, I was given a room and hooked up with IV’s and oxygen through the nose. I was not quite to the ventilator stage. The next day, May 20 was my 70 th birthday. I really messed up that celebration party. However, the nurses were really nice. At least twenty nurses came by during the day to wish me happy birthday. Then again, that could have been the normal staff checking my vitals every four hours. They did however, bring me a small birthday cake… but I could not get up enough energy to want to even eat it. My son Mark came by on my 70th birthday and sat in the parking lot. He had pizza and cookies delivered to the nurses and in return they provided him regular updates on my condition I will remember my birthday for something revolutionary that did occur. My doctor, one of many, informed me that a new drug had arrived to combat Covid-19 and I would be the first at this hospital to be on it. It was Remdesivir. Five IV sessions five days in a row. I was informed that it should cut down the recovery time to one week rather than three weeks. It was working. I felt like eating something again. I would be in the hospital for seven days before I was discharged. Contact tracing was done. My mom was fine. My friend could not get tested because he had gone through a period of time of no fever and quarantine. Tests were in limited supply at the time. My wife Heather contracted Covid-19 but showed few symptoms. It is now the Tuesday after Memorial Day Weekend and I am at home. I sit down and turn on the television and low and behold, I am the opening story on the five and 6 o’clock news in San Diego. My phone was off the hook from people seeing it. It was made in to a public service announcement because of everything going on in San Diego with masking and non masking. Especially at the beaches. For the next three weeks, an RN would visit me weekly and take my vitals. I was provided with a Spirometer to increase the volume of my lungs. The postman figured out pretty quickly what was going on with the hazmat waste basket outside my front door for the RN. He would leave mail but he would not pick it up. I had to also measure my vitals on a Finger Pulse Oximeter twice a day and report on a cell phone app. And the fun part was I was on oxygen 24-7. I discovered that I had dou- ble lung pneumonia from the Covid-19 and my oxygen levels while I was sleeping were way too low. They did not know for sure whether the apnea was a prior condition or contracted from the Covid-19. It was all still too new.