Surviving coronavirus–at home in Manchester
“Hope” is a touchstone for Kim Blumenstein of Manchester during her recovery from COVID-19.
Last Thursday was Day 112 for Kim Blumenstein.
She’s a “survivor” of COVID-19 … but she’s still dealing with the aftermath.
“The hardest thing for me is I don’t know what’s next,” she said, “or what’s going to go away and what will remain permanent.”
It’s one of the biggest concerns of those who are still dealing with the effects of coronavirus, months after a diagnosis.
“I have hope that the virus will work its way out,” she says, “but I’m also trying to … shift my thinking from the things I can’t do to things I can do. My family’s active, but there’s not a lot I can do right now. Some times, just walking to bathroom, 30 feet away, can be a struggle. I’m still experiencing new symptoms, even now. The virus continues taking its toll on my body and it’s unnerving. Every day I wake up, and think, ‘what are we dealing with today?'”
Kim doesn’t remember much about the first 30 or so days of her illness. What she knows is that she flew out to visit her sister-in-law in Phoenix on March 12 to help her recover from surgery. A lot of airports, a lot of layovers, a trip to the ER with her sister-in-law, and a lot of Lyft vehicles were part of that last-minute trip. She flew home on March 17 and began showing symptoms on March 20. At that time, she began quarantine at home. And she slept. A lot.
Despite her immediate concern for the family that surrounds and supports her, Kim’s sister-in-law in Phoenix did not get sick. Nor did her two daughters at home, her husband, or the friend who lives with them.
“At first, the doctors just said, ‘stay home, get rest, and hydrate.’ I wasn’t eligible to be tested because I didn’t have a fever. I have never run a fever during these 112 days,” she says. “You know in your bones what’s going on, but you’re not getting validated.”
In early April, a video visit with her primary care doctor sent her to an ambulatory clinic for shortness of breath and “possible COVID,” but Kim still didn’t get tested. “They just accepted it at that time because it had been longer than two weeks,” she says. “And at that appointment they spotted pneumonia on a chest x-ray; they got me on antibiotics and that helped. I felt better than I had in a while.”
But there’s more. A week later, another tele-visit with doctor due to chest pain and palpitations, sent her back to the ambulatory clinic, where they determined she had most likely pleurisy or costochondritis (a painful inflammation of the cartilage that attaches the ribs to the breastbone).
“I still couldn’t do anything else than rest, hydrate, and stay on Ibuprofen or Tylenol,” she recalls. “And by the end of May I knew something still wasn’t right.” Finally an in-person visit was scheduled; an EKG and blood work determined that she had heart issues.
“I’ve always stayed on top of my heart health because there’s been a history of heart issues in my dad’s family,” Kim explains. “And up until then, everything was normal. Grossly normal. Now, they’d found an anomaly in the EKG and another one in the echocardiogram. Still, there’s nothing they can do about it other than re-evaluate it in six weeks. No one knows how to handle any of this. It’s a virus. There’s nothing anyone can do.”
Certainly, with such a new virus there’s no playbook and it seems nearly every day new symptoms, new outcomes, and new aftermaths manifest themselves in the lives of those who have experienced this confusing and frightening disease.
Kim remains grateful for many things. She’s grateful she didn’t end up in the hospital. She’s grateful for the support of the family that surrounds her at home. She’s grateful for the privilege of time–time to spend with loved ones, time to spend on recovery, time to reflect. She gets emotional at this point, talking about how lucky she feels to have this privilege. She’s also grateful to have found a huge community of support in a COVID survivors’ group on Facebook, where nearly 7,000 survivors from around the world can talk about the illness and its effects.
“In this society, it’s hard to say, ‘I’m really this sick’,” she says. “I continue to be this sick, and it’s driving me crazy. This has decimated me. This was not the flu. Honestly, I wish it had been–because then I’d be done with it. This doesn’t have an end date. You don’t just get it and get over it. Whether or not you’re hospitalized, there is a long road to recovery.”
It has been hard to give up some parts of her life that she doesn’t know whether or when she may regain them. “I’m a good caregiver; I’m not a good patient,” she says. “I have this tendency to try and manage everything. I had to give that up. Humor and sarcasm has helped me. Knowing that I have this amazing support has helped me preserve my energy. We’ve developed an ingenuity of coping. Our family is closer; we laugh together; we have late night movie nights; we’ve got camaraderie, teamwork, and love … it carries me through.”
Although she and her family now wear masks everywhere, Kim says she has learned that anger is counterproductive. She could feel anger at those who choose not to wear masks, or those who disbelieve the science that surrounds this pandemic. But, she says, “In the end, would you rather be right … or alive?
“It’s not about ego, it’s about community,” she concludes.
She believes there’s a metaphor for all of us in these pandemic days and a lesson that we can all learn from.
“Out of all of this, I’ve come to a conclusion. The world needs to rethink ourselves,” she says. “I feel like Mother Nature is telling us, ‘go to your room,’ and think about what we’ve done to our planet and our community.”
The time to think has provided Kim with an incredible gift of hope.
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