Jesse R.

On the 25th of April 2020 I woke up feeling a bit off. I had felt nauseous and tired the entire day, but decided I could make it to work that evening. I tried the best I could to work through the discomfort. After an hour in I was on my way home. That entire night I got more and more sick, feeling as if I had a severe flu.

The next morning I had my roommate take me to the Dallas VA emergency room. I knew that something didn’t feel right. I couldn’t even hold water down. They hooked me up to an IV to rehydrate me. My blood pressure was normal but my heart rate was a bit high. They ran a flu panel and it came back negative. They ran a COVID-19 test and it came back negative. Then they wrote up my discharge paperwork to send me home telling me I’d feel better in a few days.

When I woke up that Monday morning that was not the case. At first I couldn’t even move out of my bed. The first moment I tried to stand I fell backwards into my bed. I had my roommate take me back to the ER and they ran blood tests, and immediately had me go in for a CT scan. They determined at that point that I had bacterial pneumonia, as well as mononucleosis and sepsis. (Sepsis and Pneumonia, Sepsis and Viral Infections)

I was immediately hospitalized and hooked up to a breathing tube. Me coming back knowing they were wrong saved my life. I spent the next 7 days scared and wondering if I was going to make it through everything. I was on aggressive antibiotics and IV fluids. I couldn’t eat, not move, just moving my arm would spike my heart rate up to 120-140bpm. I had never questioned whether or not I was going to live until this point.

Thankfully I was released from hospital care May 4th. To this point I have been doing the best that I can to make a full recovery from this threatening disease.