Nursing is risky business these days

After 30 years of being a nurse, Karen Daniel retired a few years ago to save her own health. Recently though, she decided to get back into the healthcare field and joined a home health company.

“I felt like I was wasting my God-given gift of healing and caring for others,” she said. “Now I feel useful again – like I’m part of the world. I love all my patients – each one of them.”

Home health nurses can drive hundreds of miles and see as many as eight patients a day. There are always risks involved when you drive all day, and risks involved when you visit a stranger’s home. And these days, there is one bigger risk to consider: COVID-19.

“I knew within 10 minutes of the visit that she had symptoms of a mild case of COVID,” Karen said, recalling her home health patient visit. “However, she wasn’t able to go get tested, due to her other issues, so technically my case cannot be traced to her.”

Exactly seven days later, on July 23, Karen felt a stress headache coming on. By midnight, she said, “it was like someone lit a match inside my central nervous system – WHOOSH! High fever and intense pain from my head and zinging down my spine like lightning. I felt like my tailbone would snap off; I could barely walk.”

After a sleepless night, Karen’s husband David carried her to the Healthcare Express in Wake Village to be tested, on Friday – eight days after exposure. “The trip was a blur of misery. Sunlight was painful; I had tears running continuously,” she said. “They did my examination in the parking lot, and I did not care who was watching.”

Her test results came back three days later – on Monday morning – and showed that Karen definitely had COVID-19. She had been told on Friday to manage her symptoms at home with Tylenol along with promethazine syrup for the lung issues she hadn’t yet developed. Seven days later she called and was prescribed a steroid Z-pack and she started taking Zinc 5000, as well as her usual multi-vitamin.

“Within the first two days, the electric pain stopped and I was left with fever and such muscle and joint soreness that I could only compare to the spinal pain I had in 2014 when I had a bone spur in my neck,” she said. “It is not a natural illness. You can feel it. In my ignorance, even at the worst of it, I thought I’d run fever a few days, turn a corner and then be 100% again. The joke is on me. When I first started showing symptoms of COVID 19, I was woefully ignorant. They weren’t the typical things you see on media. I thought I knew all about it – I had been trained on what to look for.”

Earlier this year, Karen was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes and hypertension. At the age of 51, she completely changed her diet and habits to avoid taking insulin. It’s been proven that those are two of the “underlying issues” that can cause COVID-19 to be more serious for some, as well as the arthritis she has had for years.

While Karen was nursing herself, she discovered that both her parents, John and Beth Pierce, were being tested as well. She hadn’t been close to either of them in months due to the contact with her patients. It’s well known that people in their 70s are more susceptible to the virus.

“I hugged my mom on Mother’s Day and saw them both from a distance before July 4th,” she said. “I purposely kept my distance to prevent them from getting this. And they had it anyway. We did not catch it from each other.”

Beth’s experience has been similar to Karen’s, but John has had a much rougher time of it. According to Karen, he went to Christus St. Michael’s ER in Texarkana.

“Mom took him to Texarkana, where they diagnosed him with double pneumonia as well as COVID,” Karen said. “They put him on a morphine IV drip for five hours, then sent him home with Percocet, steroid Z-pack and zinc.”

The pain medicine didn’t do much good, but John has gradually gotten better. “At one point, Daddy laid down next to mom and told her he was going to die,” said Karen. “But now he is talking about going fishing, so he is much better.”

Luckily, David has been very careful while taking care of Karen and shows no symptoms. She has been sequestered in the back part of the home, and he leaves food and medicine for her in disposable plates and cups in the hallway. That and his use of masks, gloves and disinfectant to clean with has kept him healthy so far.

The respiratory issues finally hit Karen within 7-10 days of the onset. She was told by the doctor that she is coughing up dead lung cells, and her body is sloughing off the COVID cells. She is still weak and has yet to regain her appetite.

“It takes a lot of breath to talk. It takes energy to talk. In this illness, you don’t want to eat or drink. No taste buds or sense of smell. You don’t care about ANYTHING at all,” she said. “Television means nothing. Internet means nothing. I mainly just sat in the dark and stared or slept. You cannot stay awake - such exhaustion. Muscles begin to waste away. I’ve been too weak to even brush my hair.”

Being a nurse means understanding what these symptoms can do to a body. Karen forced herself to walk twice a day, beginning on day 4, to prevent pneumonia and blood clots in her legs. Although David has tried to tempt her with “every food on the face of the Earth” nothing perked up her appetite except for some homemade peach jelly made by fellow nurse Melissa Durmon.

“I never did lose my taste for salt – and when my taste buds finally woke up, it hurt! I was NOT expecting that at all,” she said. “I still can’t smell anything, and I still am definitely not hungry. Yes, there is nausea and other stomach issues involved but they feel minor compared to the rest. My parents concur with all of this.”

As far as anyone else she may have been in contact with, daily check-ins with her company confirm that no one else has come forward with symptoms. As of August 10, Karen is back at work, with new knowledge of the virus that has caused a worldwide pandemic.

“I am not afraid of this virus. When I am well, I shall put my mask on, my hand sanitizer in my pocket and I will GO FORTH. I do respect this virus and there is a difference. Fear, I do not,” she stated. “It’s seriously day by day. WEAR YOUR MASK! It’s NOT a political statement - It’s for your own health.”