We need to get you tested.” A blood clot could have traveled to my lung from another part of my body. “I’m worried you might have a pulmonary embolism. He said one of his other Covid patients had similar symptoms. “I don’t want to send you to the emergency room,” he said. He swiveled in his chair, picked up his phone and put it back down again. I read my notes, and a worried look crossed his face.
A few days later, I was in the specialist’s office, and he was examining my chest.Īs we talked, I flipped through a little black notebook where I scribbled daily symptoms: I called my family doctor, who gave me the name of an infectious-disease specialist. And my fever persisted, too.Ĭould this really be happening again? I did what I did during my worst days with Covid: I lay face down on my bed and took deep breaths until the pressure passed. I was so tired I sometimes fell asleep upright in my chair. I had lost eight pounds as nausea tamped my appetite, and my heart seemed to race without reason. The chest tightness had passed, supplanted by a nagging ache. By then the cough had softened, and I was well past the acute phase of Covid-19, having tested negative twice. It was June 22, nearly three months after the initial diagnosis. The second time I thought I would die was different, yet eerily the same. Within a few days the pneumonia began to clear, but I was left with a cough, nausea, fever and chest pressure that was so severe at times that it felt as if an anvil had been placed on my rib cage and I couldn’t catch my breath. She vowed to keep me out of the hospital and prescribed a potent antibiotic that left me weak-kneed and dizzy. My doctor, who called daily, diagnosed my pneumonia after hearing me breathe over the telephone. Some nights I heard as many as seven ambulances an hour on the streets below my Upper West Side apartment. About one in three patients admitted to hospitals with Covid were dying alone in their beds, while refrigerated trucks stood sentry outside to hold the bodies. The first time was April 17, 2020, when, after finding out I had Covid-19 nine days earlier with aches and a cough, my fever shot up to 101.8, I could barely breathe, and my family doctor told me I had bacterial pneumonia. I remember the second time I thought I would die.
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