Days before Patrick’s hospitalization for Covid 19, he had been disassembling the boat to supply many many photos of our Sailboat ..a Valiant 40: Brick House, for an article that was being written for Practical Sailor Magazine, about one of the greatest boats ever made for cruising, the Valiant 40. Its a good read and shows my home of nearly 20 years. The link to the article is below.
Maybe just maybe I should sell her, and look for other sailboats to join in all of the beautiful places in the world I have yet to see and sail. No big ocean crossings just the joy of a new destination…hmmmmm…
No decisions the first year they say…and it would be extremely tough for me to sell her. I am turning up short on captain companions ready to continue on with me, and I have no desire to sail on my myself, with groups of woman, or with mere delivery captains. I’m already home. First choice would be to find a very experienced companion to continue this life with, but it’s proving difficult to find and I don’t want to waste my life trying to maintain this boat til the right guy comes along. This boat is meant to sail…and to keep moving. I am too. And I can’t sail off with someone only to sail off…it has to be the right person who is a phenomenal sailor.
If anyone has huge interest in buying my precious home, let me know. I may be talked in to it, with time. Or if you have tons of experience crossing oceans and think we may get along…then give me a shout…rebecca.childress at yahoo.
On May 15, we both tested positive for Covid 19. We both had felt they we had had the Coronavirus weeks if not months ago, and were surprised to still test positive. We were onboard Brick House in Hout Bay in a marina, South Africa from February 2, 2020.
It is difficult to narrow where we caught the virus, because it is difficult to say exactly when it was contracted and when our symptoms really were covid-19 symptoms and not something else. I had read early that the symptoms varied widely..it’s not just a fever, and shortness of breath. We had no fevers and no shortness of breath in the beginning. I took our temperatures twice a day early on.
On March 23, we both felt that we possibly had started it. Patrick developed an extreme sore throat, had more headaches than he normally would, and some sniffles. After 2 weeks of quarantining, taking some minor vitamins and gargling many times a day, it went away. He never had another symptom until May 12. The only medication he took was a baby aspirin every day, and a half a dose of regular multivitamins most days. He exercised every day, hiking up Chapman’s Peek to the toll booth, doing 100 sit-ups and 100 push ups each day. We walked together to the grocery store each day for some more exercise and he often carried the bulk of our groceries back. I tried to feed both of us more vegetables and less sugar during this period, just to be a little healthier. He was very impressed with himself after 2 weeks to have kicked it, as my symptoms lingered, and he encouraged me to exercise more…
Married on Brick House July 2007
On March 23, I had started to have severe hip pains. I could hardly walk, but I did to try to walk it out. I had never had anything wrong with my hips, and friends told me it sounded like I was a candidate for hip replacement. What? First in one hip, then 2 days later gone, and in the other hip, for a total of about 5 or 6 days. This was not after any harsh exercise. Then I developed an extreme cotton ball in my throat. Not sore…but incessant clearing of my throat day and night. Nothing helped. Then after about 10 days, my chest became heavy feeling. For several nights around this time, I stayed up, sitting up for about 3 nights in a row, researched what hospital to go to if I had an emergency, contemplated waking Patrick to go to a hospital, and then finally succumbing to sleep. I wasn’t experiencing shortness of breath, but I was very worried I would not wake up, and would not breathe by morning. I tried to put off sleep til Patrick would wake in the morning because maybe then he would be hear me if I did stop breathing, and be able to help me.
The heaviness in my chest continued for weeks and I remember by the end of April I put myself on an antibiotic because my spit was white and bubbly, which google told me can indicate pneumonia. I took just the right antibiotic for pneumonia and figured if it did not go away, then I had a viral pneumonia (covid-19), and not a bacterial pneumonia that the antibiotic would cure. It was not cured, and I continued with a heavy chest and white bubbly spit in to May, June, and now less so in July. In May, I did experience shortness of breath, but I attributed it to anxiety over Patrick. I had all I could do to get to the head, 4 feet away from where I was lying, or to fix myself food. I layed on my stomach often as recommended, did lots of breathing exercizes, and was scared shitless. I had heard about a symptom of losing sense of taste or small. But on Tuesday which was probably the worst day, food people were bring me was so salty I could hardly eat it. I ate in anyways because I was starving and knew I needed it.. Someone brought a cupcake to me, and with the frosting scraped off, it was still so sweet I could not finish it.I had not lost my sense of taste…it had Beene extremely exaggerated! I remembered the last few days Patrick was here on the boat with it, the same thing happened to him, and suddenly my usually adequate cooking became inedible to him. Unsalted eggs, were too salty. He hadn’t hesitated to tell me how bad my cooking was…hypoxia was doing the talking. That same week I developed tinnitus so badly I had to blare the stereo to drown it out. Constant high pitch screaming, on and off for days. I read it was possibly from stress.my ear was gurgling and popping. The same one I had had the test in. Within days the ear lost all hearing, and was totally blocked up, and had short jolts of pain. My breathing remained labored. Upon my adamant request, the US embassy doctor I was speaking to multiple times during the day, sent a pulse oximeter to me to monitor my oxygen level. It was in the low 90s at this point, never below 91%. We didn’t know my baseline before this, except the 98% the day I was tested, and the doctor felt this was acceptable.. my pulse was 90 and 100 which is said to be very poor for my sex and age.
I never had a temperature about 100.0 F. I had bouts of a sore throat, headaches which I get occasionally anyways. Besides the antibiotic, I never took anything else. I continued with my normal regimen of vitamins which included 2000 mg of vitamin C, a regular woman’s vitamin, magnesium, and an occasional vitamin.
So where did we catch it? I really don’t know. If we truly had it from March 23, then it could have been anything from the grocery store, to the hardware store we went to for boat parts, masks and hand sanitizer. It could have been the public bus we took to Cape Town to renew our visas, or the crowded visa renewal office. It could have been from carefully handing out a sandwich to the hungry local people near our location, or from the open air market we went to for an occasional meal, or the inside restaurants we went to. We don’t remember anyone coughing or appearing sick, but of course the coronavirus is MOST contagious when people have absolutely no symptoms yet, unlike the common flu.
If we didn’t get it before lockdown started in South Africa (March 26) , then the grocery store, or the hardware store, or the handing food to local people would likely be about the only place we could have gotten it, because that’s all we did during lockdown. I suppose if could have been an ATM, or the cellular store we went to get extra internet too just before we locked down. If we got it during lockdown at any time, those are the only places we could have gotten it. Or from the yacht club bathroom we showered in. Nobody at the yacht club ever shower symptoms, yet all could have been asymptomatic too. I don’t think we will ever really know.as lockdown continue, local township people got visibly thinner, and we did hand out more food. They had gone from asking for money to asking for bread. We were always very careful washing hands, wearing masks etc, though of course our minds like many wandered from being very nervous about it, to wondering if it was even real.
On May 11, we got permission to move the boat to Cape Town, for “an emergency haulout”. There had been a small leak on Brick House for some time, and Patrick had managed to finally find it. We wanted to depart the next week for parts unknown…Namibia, St Helena, Brazil, and south…so we fully stocked the boat, fueled the boat, and were ready to go after this small repair was made.
We hauled out on Friday, he did the small one man repair in the stern, and then launched on Monday. He drove the boat in to the assigned slip. He then, unlike any time in the past, allowed me to tie the boat and did not check the lines, add snubber etc. He did plug the boat in, and then went to bed. I just figured he was tired after the work he had done on the weekend.
When I came in from my exercise on Tuesday morning, and took his temperature, it was 102.9.
I googled flu vs covid. It was indeed flu season in S Africa at this point, and there weren’t too many cases of covid-19, and we had felt we had already had thr coronavirus. Google says a quick spike in temperature, rather than a slow rise, was more likely flu, among other things in the comparison chart. He said it felt like a mild flu, better than many flu he had and felt it was a waiting game to get better. He took Tylenol to reduce the fever, which helped. Gave him lots of fluid, cooked whatever he wanted to eat which wasn’t much. He proceeded with body aches, the fever, headache, and sore throat. He was happy that he had no congestion as he usually develops a sinus infection when he gets the flu, and it want in his head at all. I suggested he go to the doctors to make sure it wasn’t covid, but he convinced me that from everything we read, they didn’t want to see you for coronavirus unless you were having trouble breathing, had travelled to an infected area in the last 14 days, or were in direct contact with a confirmed case. None of these applied at all. But I did get him to agree on Wednesday night that if not feeling remarkably better by Saturday morning, that we would go in.
However, by Thursday afternoon he had developed a dry cough. He still had all of the symptoms. I was getting very worried at that point, but he didn’t want to go to a doctor to be told he had a flu. A rather mild polite flu as he described it. He also had diarrhea by now. I had some too…we figured it was the soup I made that afternoon, or the chicken and rice from the night before.
By Friday morning, I was more than concerned. He was coughing more. He was showing no signs of improvement. Still he said his breathing was fine, that he felt nothing in his chest. I don’t know…typical guy not in touch with his body? Loving husband not wanting to worry his wife…Hours later, he was coughing so bad, he could barely spit out that he could breathe. He did manage to say yes he could breathe through his nose, but he agreed to go to the hospital.
He said I needed to do his laundry first, so to avoid a fight, I did a rush job of his laundry. And he said we must walk there because we could both use the exercise. I looked at google maps and I said absolutely not…a 2 mile walk in the rain was NOT in the cards.
We called an uber, kept his head hanging out the window to be sure, and got to the hospital. He wanted some bottled water first, so I went in to the lobby of the hospital to buy some water from a vendor there, and to ask where emergency was. A polite young man took us around to the screening tent outside of the emergency room.
Upon arrival to this screening tent, Patrick was told to pull his mask up around his nose, and he managed to communicate that he couldn’t. He couldn’t breathe with the mask on. There was a bit of a struggle to get him to pull up the mask, and he was given a lighter surgical mask to put on. His blood pressure was taken…it wasn’t his usual 105 or 110…it was 210! His blood oxygen saturation level was 83%. It should be 95-98%. At 80% the doctors panic. They got him in to the emergency room and put an oxygen mask on him. I wasn’t allowed in…my blood pressure was 140, higher than my normal 100-105. My oxygen saturation level was about 93%-95%.
I was then asked, while I sat outside if I wanted a covid 19 swab test too. I responded I would IF it got me in to the room Patrick was in. They told me that it would, and I went right in. Patrick was already feeling better with the oxygen mask on and his oxygen level was already better.
We were told he was very very sick, close to cardiac arrest, and the oxygen level was a big problem. They layed him prone, and gave him blood thinners, and prepared him for the ICU. Neither one of us could believe he was to be admitted, and to the ICU nonetheless. The ambulance soon came and took him to an available bed at Groote Schuur Hospital nearby. We held hands as the door to the ambulance closed. We promised eachother, no ventilators. We had read the statistics.
That night I was called and told we were both positive for Covid 19.
During the weekend, Patrick was uncharacteristically grumpy and rude to the staff, complaining about the food, and the care. The doctor asked me to bring some food for him. I called local friends until I found someone who could bring him some food and a cell phone so I could possible talk to him.
After a very rocky weekend with quickly escalating oxygen solutions, I was called on Monday to be told they really needed to put him on a ventilator. I wasn’t asked…I was told. When I asked about just bring him home (to the boat)…no…no hospitalized Covid patience could die at home. They told me without the ventilator, he would die that evening. They told me with the ventilator , it would support his body until his immune system could battle the virus, that they had lost very few people on a ventilator that didn’t have preexisting morbity factors. We spoke about issues he had had in the past…which was really just heart arythmia caused only by alcohol, discovered 7 years previously and not experienced since. They said he had an excellent baseline, the body of someone 20 years younger, and that they wouldn’t have allocated a ventilator to him unless they felt it would help him. So I was allowed to talk with him on the phone. He yelled right away it was a bad time to call. I explained that they had to put him on the ventilator for a little while, and that he should not fight it, and that I loved him very much and would be waiting for him to wake up. He yelled at me to not call him again. The grumpiness was the oxygen deprivation. Then I heard him yell OWWWWWW…probably the shot to sedate him. Those were the last words I ever heard him say.
He passed on June 8, with me by his side. More can be seen on this video:
I am mostly recovered now….on July 8, 2020, nearly 2 months after diagnosis, 3.5 months after feeling like I first had symptoms. I have always had weak lungs…even in the best of times, walking and hiking. Never any formal diagnosis. I never pass the spirometry tests during a physical. Many doctors have told me that many people do not, and it’s not the best test anyways…to not worry about it.
I have an appointment for a physical tomorrow. Mostly to see why I still have heaviness in my chest at night. I am researching today which tests I should have, and what to ask the doctor. I am trying to take progressively more strenuous walks, and adding inclines in to the mix. I am listening to my body, not pushing myself too hard, but trying to do a little more every day. A medical friend of mine tells me I am lucky to have not died with this thing. I feel lucky. I wish Patrick had been lucky too.
He somehow made sure to leave me with a completely perfect seaworthy boat, every last thing done, in the safest marina in Cape Town. He had encouraged me to learn how to drive on the left in Richards Bay. He has taught me so much over the years on how to care for the boat, and operate it.
As I struggle to maintain the boat, give up some of the control to professional captains and repairman to keep the boat perfect, and continue to improve it….I feel him with me, guiding me with the repairs, guiding me with the process, and guiding me with the decisions I make along the way.The only person that can ever fill his boots is me, and I am working every area I can to try to do that. Life must go on. Some say he walks beside me. I feel more that he walks within me. I feel stronger, tougher and more competent than ever before. Thank you Patrick for all that you have given me. I will sail on with you forever, and will always remember what you have done for me in this life.
A few days ago I posted about my husband Patrick and I both having tested positive for Coronavirus after Patrick had to be taken to the emergency room, unable to breathe. This is a follow up post to this.
My next post as many have requested…I will try to post about how we both caught the coronavirus.
I finally got another call in so I could get a different doctor…one I could actually understand to tell me about Patricks current struggle with Covid 19…the doctor I got this morning when I called at my usual 10am time was just impossible to understand and I hung up the phone crying. The next doctor when I finally was able to get through again, hours later, was wonderful, and took her time to explain Patrick’s current status with this damn virus. Here is the summary below. And then later in the day, I got an out of the blue text…from a Youtube watcher, who knew a very knowledgeable man…Both reports are detailed below for anyone interested in this coronavirus saga.
Before I tell you about it…I want to tell you that your support has been what has kept me going through this ordeal. I couldn’t have done it without each individual little tidbit that each of you have provided me with, big and small…it has all fit together like a perfect puzzle to nourish every bit of me. I can never repay the kindness you have all shown me!!! For those who send money to me by PayPal…and ai haven’t been able to thank…I can’t seem to find your email address…please reach out to me, I want to individually thank every one…money isn’t easy to come by and I so appreciate every single dollar that has been sent. It has taken SOO much of that worry about that element away from me…and it’s nice to have one element of worry squished because as many of you know…I’m a chronic worrier!!!
So here is the report today, and the further down the report for tonight…
Creatine level…they don’t monitor his blood for this becuase the machine is doing all the work and getting rid of the poisons. The dialysis machine causes his heart to work very hard, so they give him Adrenalin to help speed it up a bit but not have to work so hard. They will begin to back off the Adrenalin in a few days when the dialysis has cleaned many times, and relieves that stress, and hopefully dialysis machine will be able to be taken away soon. He is coping well on the ventilator now, his lungs are holding 86-90% which they are satisfied with, though not thrilled with and he has gone from 70% to 65% pressure on the machine settings, in the last hour and is coping with it, so a small improvement there. Some level called Po2, which I remember the initial emergency room doctor talking about is at 11…and I distinctly remember her saying Patricks was at 3…and that was quite bad…and 11 is what they want so here is there now with that number. They are still dealing with the inflammatory issues.Asked about the hydroxicline and Zmax thing again, and she says that it’s big in the news right now, but for everyone it’s helping, it’s killing 10 more, and it’s just not indicated in this situation. I asked about using my plasma, and she said again it’s only in clinical studies, it not proven. She says he has antibodies now…so he doesn’t need antibodies…and his antibodies are indeed fighting. She also says that they all know about him, have seen his videos, know he has an incredible baseline and no medical problems…they can’t wait til he wakes up and tells them more stories. She was so nice…I’m still blubbering. At least the machine went from 70 to 65. At least they are happy with his oxygen levels, and at least the adrenaline use is going down. And he has his own antibodies now. So that’s good news right…not HUGE, but a little to embrace….
Tonight, 5/27, I got to speak to one of the top 6, head of Covid19 care in South Africa hospitals! One of our Youtube viewers said that our videos had gotten her through a dark time when she lost her husband. When she saw our latest video and then went to the website post about Patrick’s illness, she decided to take action since she was here, a sailor, and nearly cried watching the video. God I’m glad she reached out to me…this doctor was amazing.
This fairly young sounding doctor is of the 6 top brains of South Africa in regards to Covid 19. He took my number…made his number anonymous smartly, and called me and chatted with me for a full 15 or 20 minutes…He let me ask questions, gave me the run down of Covid 19 care in South Africa and much much more.
First… I asked about hydroxychloroquine, Azithromycin, and Remdesivir, and something else that ends with -integra. They are doing clinical studies, right here, right with this very doctor and the 5 others on all of these. None of these experimental drugs are ready for humans in his, and the others on his teams opinions. He feels that the US and many countries are searching for an answer, ready to cling to anything that succeeds even if it only works 10% of the time. You rarely hear about the 90% that die fast, or have terrible other complications. If we were to change Patrick to a private hospital and had a spare $ 200,000 USD or more as required to add to the mix to try an experimental drug…and would sign copious waivers, he would use it.But he said if it was his body…or his wife’s body, he would NEVER ever want Andy thing he has seen so far in these clinical trials, …never would want something that is such a gamble to be used. As a matter of fact, he said if he had covid 19, he would want to be in exactly Patricks position…not in a private hospital, but in Groote Schuur..it’s where the best results from Coronavirus are coming from. The top doctors are at that hospital…the care is around the clock not just by weekday except in case of extreme emergency, as it would be in the private hospital. There is MUCH more Covid19 experience at Groote Schuur than any other hospital becuase it houses the best medical school in the country and its extremely academic…hence no experimental drugs are tolerated, high standards are followed, by the book, and there are so many eyes because of the round the clock care, that any problems that develop are going to be dealt with much much faster. He says in the USA you may be talked in to one of these experimental drugs but he could never ever do that to himself or to his family. He also pointed out that we are VERY VERY lucky to be here in S Africa. He went to school in Columbia, and has a lot of doctor friends there now and they talk a lot between them about what is happening. In New York if you are over 65…it’s a hard and fast NO VENTILATORS SPARED for you. Patrick would be so out of luck if I had managed to fly him there. He says in South Africa, they absolutely base the choices on baseline. Whoever has the best baseline gets the ventilator, gets the machine. If Patrick has both a ventilator and a full time dialysis machine allocated to him…he says he has made a very high grade of baseline health.
Also…as he talks with family,he has a pretty good summary of what he tells them. Days 1-7 of when hard cold symptoms begin..this is when you are gonna land in the hospital if you are gonna land in the hospital…and you may just need a couple of days on a ventilator, or you may die very fast and suddenly before anyone has a chance to stabilize you. Or you may take some bad turns and things may get more serious. Days 7-14 of symptoms…this is the time that it is “as rocky as hell”. Your boat could overturn with an hours notice and your a goner. He tells his families that it doesn’t matter what the blood tests show, what any of the numbers show, or what he thinks about any of the numbers…you are in severe danger territory during days 7-14 if you are in the hospital still. If you are gonna die on this ventilator…it’s gonna be between days 7 and 14. Days 14-21 is when the virus has self eliminated..it can’t just keep growing and enveloping the body…it’s gonna be dead in this period and things are going to very very slowly get better. If you have made it to this stage, your doctor and nurse and family can breathe a very long sigh of relief. You are probably gonna survive this disease! The one exception to this is at day 14 if you find yourself in a very bad spiral down…then it’s probably not gonna turn around.You are gonna die fast if you are in a downwards spiral at this time. I’m not sure if that’s the whole day 14-21…or the beginning of it or what..it’s the one point that now as I write this, sort of gets past me. But Patrick’s not in a fast downward spiral right now. He’s already down pretty far though…so hopefully it’s the spiral that’s significant and not the “down”. But my general feeling is that with today’s minor little improvememts, as opposedto a very bad spiral down…that we are almost OK to have hope now.
Patrick had his first hardcore, for sure symptoms on May 12. I think it’s reality he may have felt it coming before then…maybe even as early as May 8 but that is speculation on my part. He went in on May 15…so it seems her went in on the day 7-14 mark..or slightly before it…so he was in the big danger period for the whole 1st week to 10 days at the hospital. Like the whole time he has been there. Imagine his boat was about to sink without much notice. God. But NOW, we are without a doubt at Day 15, possibly as late as Day 18. If we are at Day 18, I’m slightly worried because the last few days have certainly been a downward spiral. But today, if day 15…was a step up finally. Anyways, it seems we should go up from here.
So…the next thing we spoke about is the virus itself. After approximately 14 days in the body..the virus can no longer survive. It can’t do any more ravaging…it’s about dead. Antibodies or no antibodies, which he is said to have the antibodies now…the virus can not go on…it has done What it’s going to do. Hopefully the surrounding organs have been supported well enough to start working on their own again. That is ALL that South Africa at this point feels should be done…monitor and support the surrounding organs so they can come out the other side OK, which is exactly what has been done for all of Patrick’s organs in the last 12 days….so fingers crossed they managed to do it well enough. He said that’s the big huge challenge is being able to protect those organs from the virus.
Oh and the other thing he stressed…South Africa has lost NOBODY who had a good baseline…not even 1 exception to that rule. The people who have good health going in, even if they get extremely critical during the virus, they don’t lose them…they may struggle maintaining their bodies and there may be lasting problems after the illness ends…but no one has died. Truly, only those with co-morbidities have died. Every critical case they have had with no co-morbidites have survived. And many with co-morbidities have survived too.
It was really really good to talk to this Doctor… You hear the stats of what’s happening in the rest of the world. But what’s happening here in South Africa…has been a mystery I have been struggling with. I’m times like this I have found google is NOT my friend…just leading me in to despair really…So being able to talk this doctor just filled in so many blanks for me! Thank you Wendy for arranging such a gratifying conversation with someone who really knows about this coronavirus disease and it’s treatment in South Africa!
If you want to help, drop me a note of encouragement…to keep thinking positive…to remember to eat…or to support us using the GoFundMe site…here is the info: Go Fund Me
