“It began late July last year. I had the COVID delta variant. I spent 40 days in the hospital. It kind of freaks me out to talk about it.

“I started at Patients ER. Then I was transferred to El Campo Memorial Hospital. My lungs were in such bad shape, I was on a breathing machine 24/7. I was getting 32 liters of oxygen at one time.

“I was in ICU on a Saturday evening when a father came in to pray with me. I’ve seen enough movies to know when that happens, it’s not good.

“I lost a couple childhood friends while I was going through my stuff. I saw one of them while I was in ICU. So I was wondering, am I next? Those were very dark days. I felt like I was on an island, and I didn’t have a chance to get off.

“But I gradually started to improve. As I got out of ICU, I started saying, ‘Hey, I think I’m going to survive this. I’m going to fight this. And I’m going to win.’

“When I got transferred to Encompass Health Rehabilitation Hospital in Pearland, I couldn’t do anything for myself. Basically, I had to start my life over again. I owe those guys so much. They helped me learn how to eat. I had to learn how to walk. I had to learn how to take a shower and brush my teeth — all the basic stuff.

“I busted my butt in physical therapy. My therapist would tell me, ‘OK, that’s it.’ But I’d say, ‘That’s not it. I’m going to do five more reps.’ I really pushed myself.

“After I finally came home, I had a relapse two weeks later and spent five days at Houston Methodist in Baytown. But since December 1st, I’ve been pretty good.

“COVID fog is a real thing, where you forget stuff. And I have some numbness in my right hip area. They say a lot of COVID patients have nerve problems. I also keep my little oxygen machine in the back seat, but I haven’t had to use it for about six months.

“Through the whole ordeal, I had a lot of support, especially from my three sisters and my two boys. And I had a lot of faith. My mom passed in 2018. So during the worst parts, I spent a lot of time praying to her. I also prayed to the man above. It was a tough deal. But I’m here today, and I’m feeling very blessed.”

— Jerry Michalsky

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“I’m an RN. I’ve been in nursing for about a year. And let me tell you, it was a tough year to be a first-time nurse.

“I was working on a medical-surgical floor in a smaller hospital. We got to see a little bit of everything, and it kept you very busy. Our unit was the only one that they kept COVID free. But they would pull some of us to COVID units whenever they needed extra staff.

“That part was really challenging. I had patients who at the beginning of the day were not requiring oxygen. But by the end of the day, they were one step away from intubation. The progression was pretty scary.

“Whatever I may have thought my first year as a nurse was going to be like, it was not that. I’m 23, trying to figure out how to be an adult on my own. And now I’m thrown into taking care of people who are extremely sick. And they go to very sick, very quickly. I had to trust my gut and my education. It was a steep learning curve for sure.

“I also learned to rely on the staff around me. We all stuck together. It really became like a family. My co-workers, the charge nurses, and the managers, everybody was awesome. When you needed help, you could rely on your team members. If I had felt alone and that I couldn’t ask for help, that would have been terrifying. I had a team that I could ask any question, 1,000 questions, all day long. That’s what made it doable.

“As a new nurse, you want to show that you’re competent. But if you’re overconfident, you’re probably going to mess something up. I’d rather ask questions. When you see older, more experienced nurses ask the charge nurse about something, you feel comfortable as a new nurse asking questions. There’s no shame in doing that. You will never know it all. And you see something new every day. That was definitely true for me during my first year as a nurse.”

— Allie Marionneaux

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“I stopped working for a while because I was scared of all the COVID. But he did go to work. Maybe it was there that he got sick. Then I got it, too.

“I didn’t have any problems. So I just took care of him. He went to the hospital emergency room two times. He had a high fever for 14 days. That was the worst part. After that he was fine, but he felt so tired. So he stayed home for a few months. The doctor said it would be better for him.

“Now he’s back to work. I’m back at work. We hope everything is going to be all right.

“Our daughter, Guadalupe, is a nurse in the COVID unit at Houston Methodist Baytown Hospital. It’s now an IMCU/COVID unit due to the acuity of the patients in this current surge.

“She finished school, and has been working there a few months. At first, it was so hard to see her leave home and go to work there. She’s working with COVID patients, so we’ve been worried about her a lot.

“But she already had the vaccine. She has lots of protection with masks and shields and clothes. They change and change all day. So I think she’s fine. She looks happy. She prays every day about the people who are sick, and about us because she worries about us, too.

“Sometimes I think she’s going to be so sad when she’s back at home. But no. She says, ‘Mom, I’m so happy to be helping people.’ I’m so proud of her. And I pray for her.”

— Fanny Zepeda

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(Part 1 of 3) “To be honest, we didn’t think COVID was that bad. It seemed like a lot of people getting sick got over it, and they weren’t hospitalized. I got COVID in August 2020. I lost my taste and smell. That’s it. When the vaccine came out, we weren’t ready to get it because it was so new. We always wore masks, though.

“Then on March 31, Justin woke up with a fever and chills. When he got tested, he was positive. A few days went by, and he kept throwing up. So he went to the ER. His oxygen levels were good, but he had a little bit of pneumonia. Overnight, he got much worse, so I took him to the ER again. His oxygen saturation was 58%. A normal level is 95%. He was admitted to the hospital on April 7. He had a severe case of pnuemonia. Five days later, he was intubated and placed on a ventilator. They told me that it wasn’t looking good.”

By the end of April, his condition had improved slightly. But after being transferred to an acute care facility, “everything went downhill. He had two collapsed lungs. He had ARDS [acute respiratory distress syndrome]. And he was in pulmonary failure. His lungs had been so damaged from pneumonia and COVID. He was very ill.

“They placed two chest tubes in his right lung and one in his left lung to help with drainage. He was sedated from May 25 to July 5 to keep him calm and allow his lungs to heal. Eventually, as things improved, they took out all the chest tubes and were able to wean him off the ventilator.

“Finally, on Aug. 18, he was able to come home. He was in the hospital 133 days. It was tough. I would never want anybody to have to go through this. Doctors told me he was the youngest patient they’d seen with such a severe case. There were days when I didn’t know if he was going to make it.”

— Lauryn Cook

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“I was born premature, three months early. I weighed 1 pound, 11 ounces. Doctors said I had a 50-50 chance to survive. And that if I did survive, I would have all kinds of health issues, like physical ailments and mental problems.

“It was a very challenging time for my parents. They were young and scared. They didn’t know what was going to happen with me. But they told the doctors, ‘No matter what’s wrong with her, do whatever you need to do to make sure she survives.’

“I was in the NICU at The Woman’s Hospital of Texas. I was born March 27, 1989, and I didn’t leave the hospital until June 19. My mom took me to follow-up appointments. She made sure that I took certain vitamins to help with my development. But growing up, I didn’t really ever get sick or anything. No health issues. And I’m perfectly fine today.

“In the community where I grew up, they call me the miracle baby. We’d go to church when I was a kid, and people would say, ‘Oh, there’s our miracle baby.’ They had been praying that I would be all right.

“My grandmother was a teacher at Travis Elementary for over 30 years, so she wanted me to go there with her. It’s funny. Even the teachers I had at Travis remembered me. They were like, ‘Oh, you’re Kristine. We prayed for you five years ago.’

“To this day, people still bring it up. I just smile and reflect on how amazing it is that even as a baby, my life made such an impact. Like I have some kind of energy that people gravitate to.

“I feel like it was a miracle, a blessing. The fact is, I don’t have to be here today at all. But God has me here for something. I’m still trying to figure out what it is I’m here to do. I don’t have all the answers yet. But I do feel like I’m here for a reason.”

— Kristine Singleton

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“I got my first shot in mid-December. It was the first day we started administering them at the hospital. We found out that we were able to fill more vaccines per vile than originally thought. As it turned out, the day that I was originally scheduled for my first shot ended up being when I got my second dose.

“With the first shot, I had some discomfort in my arm. But it wasn’t anything more than you normally experience after a flu shot.

“About 30 minutes to an hour after my second dose, the pain in my arm was much more noticeable. During the pandemic, I had slowly built up a home gym, and I kept up very well with my fitness. So the night after my second dose, I was doing side planks. It was painful in that arm, but I was still able to get in a full-effort workout. The pain subsided over the next few days, and then it was fine. I didn’t have any other side effects.

“I don’t have any underlying conditions and I’m not in any of the high-risk categories. But there have been plenty of cases where healthy, young people have ended up getting sick and dying. I think that’s been one of the major fear factors during this pandemic. That’s what’s scary to people like me, a young, healthy, 31-year-old.

“Getting the vaccine has definitely provided a sense of relief. I know that I’m still going to be around to take care of my daughter.”

— Jessica Ortiz

Jessica works at Houston Methodist Baytown Hospital.

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“I tested negative for COVID-19 on Oct. 5. Four days later, I tested positive. I went to the ER once, but was sent home with steroids and Albuterol, and was told to buy a nebulizer. I continued to get worse with a fever, cough and flu-like symptoms. So I went back to the ER, and this time I was admitted to the isolation unit.

“When I hadn’t improved and then got pneumonia, my family was very worried. I also have COPD, so the pneumonia was scary for all of us. My lungs were a mess. I had difficulty breathing. Because I felt so bad for days, I wouldn’t even talk to anyone. I wondered if I would ever come home.

“After a week with no improvement, the doctor started me on Remdesivir. After five days, I improved tremendously. I was so happy when I was able to get out of isolation. I hugged my family like I’d been gone years instead of weeks.

“Finally, I was able to go home with a walker and on oxygen. I still have what feels like vertigo. I trip and stumble a lot, so I have a cane that helps. My husband and our 17-year-old grandson, who we’re raising, also had COVID. It wasn’t as bad as mine, but I’m so thankful they recovered. We have no idea how we contracted it, unless at a drive-through restaurant, because we went nowhere. And we followed all protocols.

“It’s been about two months since I got out of the hospital, and I still have residual effects. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever feel normal again.”

— Kaye Sneed

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“We didn’t know what to expect. They told us it might be a stillbirth. I had a C-section at about seven months so he wouldn’t have to struggle any more than needed. And Oliver was born on March 20, 2019. It was a really beautiful morning. He cried, and I was like, OK, we’re going to make it. We are the exception. We are that very small percent of babies that make it. But then his lung collapsed. His heart rate dropped. He got intubated while we were still in the delivery room, and he was taken to the NICU.”

What followed was a medical odyssey over nearly three months, with more bad days than good. Baby Oliver received several forms of dialysis in an attempt to save his failing kidneys. He also was treated for infections and other complications. “There were times we thought, oh, we’re good. But there were so many other times when we thought, he’s not going to make it.

“On that last day, we got a call. ‘Hey, his heart has stopped beating several times now. How do you want us to proceed?’ The hardest thing for us was that there was no black or white. It was not defined. We didn’t know what it would mean in terms of his developmental growth later as a child. Is he going to have learning delays? Is he going to be able to play with our two healthy children? The doctors calculated he would need like three kidney transplants over time in order to have any chance of a decent life. It didn’t hit us until he was dying, really dying, that you know what, that’s not a life we want him to have. We realized then that the do-nothing choice means we’re going to save him from being sick for the rest of his life. So we made the call, this decision no parent should ever have to make: cut the ventilator. He was six days away from being three months old.”

— Marilyn Heredia

Oliver passed away on June 14, 2019.

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The post ‘We made the call: cut the ventilator’ appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“They had to go through a lot of approvals to put me back on the transplant list. Somehow they got it done. And within a week, they found another liver for me. It was amazing how fast it happened.

“They don’t let you know who the donor is, but I was able to write a letter of thanks after my first transplant. While I was in the hospital with the second transplant, the doctor was entering information in the computer when he said, ‘It’s a really sad situation with this liver donor. It was a 19-year-old boy who died in an accident. He was killed by a bull.’ I don’t know what he was thinking, telling me that. But I thought, oh my gosh, that’s so weird and so sad.

“After my surgery, one of my sisters was at the hospital looking at her iPad. She was showing my daughter something. And I was wondering, what are they whispering about? They didn’t want to tell me. It turns out this boy in Joshua, near the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, had a freak accident. He was an up-and-coming bullrider, and was practicing when he was thrown off the bull. He got tangled up underneath, and the bull trampled him. He was killed instantly.

“Apparently, he was an unbelievable young man. He talked about bullriding, family and faith, and the importance of his church and God. It’s really special to know that I’m connected to him in this way.

“It’s a bittersweet feeling. It hurts to think about the people who have passed away. But I feel so blessed to have this opportunity to continue my life.

“With everything I’ve gone through, I’m more educated about liver disease. I hope to begin sharing my story so that I might help somebody else.

“And I push for making sure people note on their driver’s license that they want to be a donor. By sharing your organs after you’re gone, you can give others a new lease on life. Two people have done that for me, and I couldn’t be more grateful. Because of their generosity, I’ve dodged two bullets.”

— RoxAnn Cruz-Martinez

RoxAnn’s second liver transplant was on Jan. 27, a day before her wedding anniversary.

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“After my transplant, I had scans every six months. Since I had two little nodules of cancer in my original liver, they wanted to make sure it didn’t come back.

“Meanwhile, they discovered that my bile duct and the donor’s bile duct never matched up properly. Bile started leaking into my body, and it’s like poison. They couldn’t find a permanent fix, so I had stents replaced in my bile duct every three months for a year. During a scan they found a problem with my portal vein, so I had to get a permanent stent for that.

“Then last summer, I started getting really bad headaches. And all of a sudden, I would get a fever. They thought it was an infection, so they gave me antibiotics. But it kept happening. I also was having pain in my side. When they did another scan, they found a problem with the portal vein stent. I needed surgery to fix it.

“When I woke up in the ICU, so many family members were there. My husband was there with my daughters, plus my brother, all my sisters and my nieces. I didn’t know what was going on. The ICU doctor came in and said, ‘Everything’s OK for right now, until we have your second surgery.’ And I just looked at him.

“I couldn’t talk because I was intubated. They had my hands strapped down so I wouldn’t pull the tube out. I began pounding my hands for them to unstrap me. When they unstrapped one of my hands, I motioned for them to give me something to write with. The first thing I wrote was, ‘What surgery?’ with a big question mark.

“It turned out the stent that was put in earlier had punctured my portal vein, gone into the bile duct, and messed up several other veins. So when they opened me up and saw that mess, they stitched me back up quickly and said I needed another transplant immediately. I was a ticking time bomb ready to explode.

“The scariest part was seeing all my family there. They thought they were going to lose me.”

— RoxAnn Cruz-Martinez

RoxAnn comes from a family of eight. Her parents and oldest brother have passed away.

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