2020 Coming to a Close

 It had been a long time since I wrote in my Rentelov blog. Even though I am truly grateful for the opportunity to open Rentelov as a result of a need I wanted to help fill with PPE, the dramatic impact on the entire world has shaken us to the core. Both my husband and I contracted COVID-19 in March 2020. During this time, we were very worried and scared as the virus and it's impact on individual health was very new. The world was scrambling to figure out what the best course of action was. In fact, our hospital didn't implement masks until right after I became sick. I remember calling employee health and asking that I come get swabbed for the flu. My hope was that I could just get Tamiflu, and hopefully get right back to work. I rarely get sick and hated taking off work as I mostly needed sick days for when the kids weren't feeling well so that I could stay home with them. It was a rare occasion that I called off sick for myself. However, now that I was working around newborns, I was especially more cautious. As soon as my throat started to feel scratchy and my body became achy, I decided to call employee health. During this time, the main #1 symptom to watch for was a fever. Even most of the quarantine restrictions surrounded when fever started and how long to stay home and quarantine until after the fever resolved. I did not have a fever. I never had a fever. I had severe body aches, dry cough, and a headache. So, employee health directed me to the COVID swabbing station to get swabbed for both Flu A, Flu B, and COVID. I remember sitting on my couch when I received the alert from my electronic health app that a new lab result was in. I was shocked- POSITIVE for Covid-19. I was the first in my department to get sick. I started to cry. My husband came over, hugged me, and assured me that we would be ok. We were healthy, young, and my symptoms were mild. I looked around at my family and in that moment, mortality became very real. 

I instantly worried about my husband as he is a type 1 diabetic. During this time, diabetics were not doing very well. Just this week we had a very candid conversation with the family about what we would do if either of us contracted the virus. My husband was sure he probably wouldn't make it out alive, and discussed his advanced directives with me. We had only been married a year and a half, and now I was discussing what to do if he died. I felt numb and very alone. I had been a single mom for many years, went through a nasty divorce, endured the after effects of domestic violence, and just generally struggled before I met my husband. He brought light, love, and family into a very dark and lonely time for me. We always joked that he would die before me as he is 11 years older. In fact, recently his parents had purchased family burial plots. We teased each other that even in death we would never be separated. However, the "race" was to see who would be there first and who would have to lay forever at the foot of the plot and "smell the others feet for eternity." We are healthcare workers; our humor is a bit different, but we enjoy that about each other.

During our illness we took care of each other, assured each other, and took a lot of naps. The 13th day after my symptoms presented, I was very sick. I was dizzy, lightheaded, and my mind felt very groggy. Walking up the stairs took everything in me to do. I attempted to put towels away in the bathroom and I began to black out. Breathing became difficult as I laid in bed and just used all of my energy and focus on taking the next breath. I was very scared and worried that this might be it for me, maybe I wouldn't make it out alive. However, the next day I woke up and I felt fine. Still short of breath but nothing like the day before. I felt ecstatic, we had made it out of this alive!

As things settled back into "life after COVID" we were thrilled to have made it out alive. I could feel myself slightly relax knowing that we had it and came out of it with minimal side effects. I still struggled with shortness of breath from time to time, but over the next few months that seemed to dissipate. I thought the worst was behind us, I thought wrong.

Six months later on October 9th, my husband called me from work "I need you to come get me, I can't stop throwing up. I feel awful. Please come as quickly as you can." He had ridden his bike to work that morning so that I could sleep in. I got dressed as fast as I could and I headed to the hospital. I could hear it in his voice that he felt very sick. When I pulled up, I saw him sitting on a bench with his head between his hands. His face was pale and he did not look very good at all. I helped him get his bike into the back of the vehicle and promptly handed him an emesis bag as he dry heaved violently. "I couldn't find my phone, I think I left it in the bathroom." I pulled up his current location on my phone and saw that it was in fact in our vehicle. This wasn't uncommon for him to forget where he left his phone, wallet, or keys. I just chalked it off to a combination of him not feeling well and his own little personality mishaps. I took him home and put him straight to bed. We both thought he had a stomach bug, and I wanted him to get as much sleep as he could to feel better. 

He began to do odd things such as taking the medication bin in the bathroom, dumping it completely out, and then leaving it all over the bathroom. "I was trying to find ibuprofen, my head hurts." He is not as "type A" as I am. From time to time he will leave a coffee cup here, toothpaste over there, socks in random places, not replace the toilet paper roll but instead just place a new one directly on top of the empty roll. Little things. However, for him to dump an entire medication bin all over the bathroom was just completely uncharacteristic of him. Not going to lie, I was irritated. I was in wife/mom mode at home and was so busy chasing messes, cooking, and cleaning that I didn't see the subtle changes going on with my husband.

On Saturday, I was reading a book in the living room when he swayed down the hallway stairs. "I need you to help me with my insulin pump, I can't see it very well and I need to put in a new cartridge. I'm having some vision problems and I can't see what my blood sugar is." I wasn't sure what he meant by this, but I knew that when his blood sugar gets low he walks kind of funny, his face gets pale, his speech slurs a bit, and his vision is affected. I was surprised that his pump said that his blood sugar was actually high in the 250s. He was certainly looking more like he did when it's low. I decided to double check with a glucometer to make sure his pump was accurately calibrated. Sure enough, it read in the 250s. I asked him if he wanted to go to the emergency room to get looked at. He declined because of how packed and overwhelmed the ED is with COVID patients and didn't want to sit there all day. So I asked him if he wanted to try urgent care instead and at least get looked at. He agreed. I looked up the urgent care hours to make sure they were open. Unfortunately, they were closed until Monday. "I can make it to Monday and I'll go in then. If things get worse, then we can go to the ED." 

He laid in bed and complained that his head hurt. The kids were playing video games in their room and he began to get irritated because they were laughing at it hurt his head. He thought he was dehydrated from not being able to keep even water down. I tried my best to keep the kids quieter so that he could rest. I did a quick neuro check on him because I was concerned about how bad his headache was. Besides the odd periodic vision issues, he didn't have any other deficits. No weakness, no numbness, no tingling, no lack of sensation, nothing. Little did I know, my husband was having a major stroke. 

Sunday, I went to work. Sunday I received a call that my husband was brought to the emergency department. Sunday I raced from my department to the emergency department to observe someone who physically looked like my husband but didn't recognize me. Sunday I talked with the neurologist who couldn't rule out that our COVID infection 6 month prior had caused a clot. Sunday our lives changed drastically.

Six months after our COVID infection, it was confirmed by MRI and CT scan that my husband had suffered a right PCA stroke which affected the entire right occipital region of his brain. We thought for sure we had made it out of COVID relatively unscathed. We were so wrong. I started a blog to write about my husband's recovery to update family, friends, and also to help him look back in his recovery to see how far he's come: www.nurserentel.blogspot.com

It is now December 2020, two months after my husband's stroke. We won't know for an entire year after his stroke on how well he will recovery. The future is uncertain, but he is doing remarkable well in therapy. The focus is to help him make new neuropathways to accommodate his deficits. I love celebrating his new victories in recovery. He is truly an inspiration. 

On December 22, I made the decision to get the COVID 19 vaccine as a Christmas gift to myself. Once again, I was the first in my department, but this time for a good reason. After everything my family has gone through these past nine months, I decided to take the step and get the vaccine. This was a personal choice that I did for myself, for my family, for my friends, and for my patients. I am very very tired but on this day I was able to grasp a bit of hope. 

So, I wanted to thank each and every one of you who has been kind and supported my small business during this very difficult year. Sewing has become something that had helped me through some very dark times during these past couple of months. I am honored and blessed to know that I can use my talent to help provide coverage and goodness to other healthcare workers all around the world while they are battling this pandemic. Thank you for all that you do!