CORONAVIRUS INFO PROVIDED BY DR. JIM HARRIS – 12/29/2020

12/29/2020

COPY OF MNM LETTER TO THE EDITOR FROM SUNDAY, DEC. 27:

Merry Christmas, Marshall, Texas! I owe my deepest gratitude to friends and family here and throughout East Texas for their outpouring of support as I’ve dealt with recovery from a serious bout with COVID-19 pneumonia. It has brought me extreme comfort during this very difficult time to hear from you and receive your thoughts and prayers. My family and I thank you. Love is so powerful. I pray others going through this are getting support too. It’s a big deal to know others care and shows me our community’s true colors.

I’ve heard the anecdotal stories of COVID-19 not being that bad or being compared to the flu with younger people. That may be true in some cases and if so, it is fortunate. In my case, it was not true. This has been a terrible and frightening experience. It has not been simple.

One minute I felt a little difficulty breathing. Within a few hours, my lungs were closing in on me. I could no longer stand up and walk around without losing 20 points on my oximeter. The was no air to breathe because it was being blocked by heavy inflammation inside my lungs. I was beginning to cough out pink fluids and blood. Just moving my body to the side 12 inches caused a coughing fit so bad that I couldn’t breathe in or spit out the blockage. I was gasping for breath and trying not to choke on what were now vicious, bloody mucous plugs my lungs were becoming inflamed and infested with.

It was like breathing through a day-old banana milkshake or through a very wet batch of your kid’s homemade slime project. This continued for about 20 hours for me as I sat on an ER gurney bed in triage, fighting to breathe and waiting to get picked for a hospital bed. The beds were full, and the wait was what it was. There were and still are plenty of sicker priorities ahead of 40-something year-olds.

At times it felt like I was trying to breathe out of a 2-inch box. I would lose oxygen and then spend the next five frantic minutes trying to get it back to normal with concentrated breathing and attempts not to panic.

When you can’t breathe, your reactions go primal. Involuntarily you gasp to squeeze that last bit of oxygen into your system so you can live. Everything else around you is white noise.

Once I got that breath and several more, I created a mental picture of my Gaby, Grace, and Dinora to add resoluteness. They were standing in a line. My focus was to keep that line level and centered with balanced breathing. “Fight the good fight,” I heard the doctor say as she passed my curtained ER stall. Several hours later I heard a nurse excitedly say “We have a room for No. 26”.

The rest of the story was a five-day struggle with treatments including plasma, Remdesivir, steroids, blood thinners, IVs, breathing treatments, and an assortment of other meds and tests for my road to recovery. It was not easy, but I was treated by some of the finest healthcare workers I could ever ask for, many local and many from traveling nurse organizations. They saved me like they are saving people across our nation.

I pray you don’t ever experience this. If you are feeling thankful and giving this holiday, think about wearing a mask for the overextended healthcare workers who are putting themselves on the line for people like you and me. They fight for you. Fight for them! I would not have survived without them.

Be thankful for your loved ones. Think about their futures and the small calls to sacrifice we can make now to get through this as a community. If nothing else, be selfish! Wear a mask and think about yourself. If you don’t have to experience this disease, you’ll have a much merrier Christmas.

Rush Harris

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CORRECTION FROM YESTERDAY: I used the word “now” when I meant “not.”

The paragraph should read ” Now, Monday, 28 December, we all know several people who have or have had Covid—or who have died of Covid. I must say that most of the more recent cases of which I have personal knowledge, probably came home with asymptomatic school-aged children. Until this current peak runs its course, I would NOT let my children go back to school. The White House proved that frequent testing won’t prevent spread in institutions. Through no fault of their own, schools cannot protect teachers and students and adult employees from the disease.”

J. Harris

(J. Harris: We looked at this article in July, 2020. I bring it back now to warn again that younger children can be dangerous carriers of Covid.)

“Our analyses suggest children younger than 5 years with mild to moderate COVID-19 have high amounts of SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA in their nasopharynx compared with older children and adults. Our study is limited to detection of viral nucleic acid, rather than infectious virus, although SARS-CoV-2 pediatric studies reported a correlation between higher nucleic acid levels and the ability to culture infectious virus.5 Thus, young children can potentially be important drivers of SARS-CoV-2 spread in the general population, as has been demonstrated with respiratory syncytial virus, where children with high viral loads are more likely to transmit.6 Behavioral habits of young children and close quarters in school and day care settings raise concern for SARS-CoV-2 amplification in this population as public health restrictions are eased. In addition to public health implications, this population will be important for targeting immunization efforts as SARS-CoV-2 vaccines become available.

TOMORROW WE WILL HAVE ANOTHER PEDIATRIC ARTICLE OF IMPORTANCE.

WE WILL ALSO CONCENTRATE ON VACCINES FOR A WHILE IF WE CAN.