An odyssey of months called covid-19 4:06
(CNN) -
Delusions… endless delusions.
Immersed in a spiral of forgetfulness and ravings and only accompanied by the monotonous sound of the heart monitor, he could barely open his eyes.
When it happened, the image was terrifying.
Connected to endless tubes, devices, cables and IVs, León Tovar, an art collector born in Bogotá some 57 years ago, could not help feeling that the end was inevitable.
It all started with a trip to Europe.
The year was still in its infancy when León - León's heart, why not?
- was divided by labor issues between the art fairs of Maastricht, in Holland, and Madrid.
The news about the appearance of a dangerous virus in China already resounded in the streets of the Old Continent, but he, like most mortals at that time, thought: "Not me, not me."
LOOK: The long road to recovery for some covid-19 patients
In any case, before arriving in the United States, where Tovar lives and works, his plan was already outlined.
As soon as he set foot in the Big Apple, this healthy and cautious man - "I didn't even take an aspirin" - did not hesitate to take a covid-19 test and take up quarters in another property, far from his loved ones.
Here the odyssey began.
“That was on a Thursday or Friday.
By Saturday he was very ill, extremely ill.
My health began to deteriorate dramatically and, practically, I began to run out of breath, "he says now.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus, hungry for Leon's ACE2 receptors, had already made a dent in his body and the dreaded covid-19 said "present."
León relives the nightmare: “I started to shake a lot;
he was sweating deeply.
I don't know if I had a fever or not.
I was very weak.
I shivered so much during the night that I fell out of bed.
That's when I got scared and said, 'Well, I have to be sick.'
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the chances of hospitalization as we age increase considerably.
Four times more for adults between 50 and 64 years in relation to the comparative group (19-29 years).
The chances of dying from the disease are even higher, up to 30 times higher between both groups.
According to projections from the same agency, for every 100,000 inhabitants, there are 255 adults between the ages of 50 and 64 who are hospitalized.
Léon was already one of them.
An odyssey of months called covid-19 4:06
Hours, days, weeks ...
He was to spend more than a month and a half in the hospital: “I entered the New York-Presbyterian / Weill Cornell Medical Center that morning of March 17 and was hospitalized there for approximately 48 days, of which I was intubated for more than three weeks and almost four weeks in the intensive care unit.
In an induced coma, they were more than 40 days ”.
These patients are called
"long haulers"
, something like long-term patients.
Patients who, like Tovar, spend an inordinate amount of time in intensive care units, demanding to the limit of health personnel.
“They are our long-term warriors,” baptized Dr. María Padilla, director of the Lung Disease Program at Mount Sinai Hospital, who cared for León during her hospitalization.
According to preliminary statistics, around three-quarters of patients hospitalized for COVID-19, can become long-term patients, according to a report received on the medical portal medRxiv, which compiles unpublished scientific research and has among its sponsors the University of Yale.
And the odyssey that awaits them, in most cases, is a martyrdom.
"It's like having poisoned you"
To the well-known respiratory difficulties, fever, pneumonia and muscle pain typical of the disease, we must add a constellation of symptoms and afflictions that patients suffer during intensive care;
especially among those that are mechanically ventilated.
Intubations, tracheotomies, cardiorespiratory arrests, hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, depression, speech difficulties, seizures, heart, kidney, liver problems, blood clots, thrombosis.
The list is endless, as is the length of stay.
The ravages caused by the covid-19 in the humanity of León during and after the hospitalization are diverse and, in many cases, require a lot of time and patience to get ahead.
The list of problems continues for Tovar: “The immobility from being hospitalized for so long produced what was called 'frozen shoulders', a freezing of the shoulders.
I was diagnosed with severe damage to my shoulder blades.
I have a throat damage from the tubing and from the tracheostomy.
For a long time I was unable to drink liquids and I did not eat for almost four months.
For the pulmonary part, I had a different therapy because, obviously, one loses respiratory capacity.
I had to do chest-up therapy.
Also therapy to speak, therapy in my legs ”.
Tovar continues to recover on several fronts, in addition to collaborating with Mount Sinai Hospital in areas of disease research.
"From very early on, we realized that in order to care for a patient with covid-19 we had to call all the disciplines that impact him," says Dr. Padilla.
"The cardiologist, the pulmonologist, the nephrologist, the physical therapist, the hematologist, the liver specialist ...".
“I was a completely healthy person, I had never been in a hospitalization.
It's like having poisoned you, ”says León.
And although in recent months the mortality of patients hospitalized for covid-19 has decreased, the intensity of what happens inside intensive care units still continues.
Loneliness: the silent enemy
History does not stop repeating itself every day, around the world.
A person is infected, begins to feel bad, at the same time worsens, is admitted to a health unit and, then ..., incommunicado.
It does not matter the skin color, religion or financial situation of the patient.
Beyond the cyclopean accompaniment of medical personnel, this virus must be defeated alone.
“They are patients who are really very lonely and you try to do what you can to accompany them.
But when you have 80 or 90 patients, there is little time you have to be with them, and that is a problem, ”says Dr. David de la Zerda, director of Intensive Care at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami.
The hours, the days, the weeks piled up for Leon… And for his family, nothing.
“It was a pretty tough subject because they took me to the hospital and I was completely isolated and isolated.
My first communication with them I think was five weeks later.
They gave them a report at six in the afternoon, whenever they could, but the hospitals were really collapsed here in New York City.
And between dreams and realities, one day León heard: "Look, there is a son of yours who wants to talk to you, your family wants to talk to you," said the voice.
“It was like an angel,” Tovar acknowledges about the doctor who communicated him with his family.
“I had delusions for most of the month and a half that I was asleep.
That first communication was basically me telling them that I was alive, but that I was very sick.
It was not very clear how much time had passed ”.
And time passed.
The fall of this gloomy 2020 begins in New York.
The year has become eternal for León since that trip to Europe.
As much, as it is for each one of the covid-19 patients who fight alone day by day to save their lives, or for their families or for medical teams or, why not, for the whole world.
Leon's odyssey is slowly coming to an end.
On the shore, Mariu, like Penelope, awaits him, firm and determined.
He hopes that the aftermath of this horrible disease will abandon his lion and this Greek tragedy that the Tovar family is going through ends, once and for all, with a happy ending.
coronaviruscovid-19 United States New York Patient
