WHAT IT WAS LIKE ...

'I felt like death warmed over.”

That's how Fairfield resident Katy Anderson described her condition in November while suffering from the COVID-19 virus. Anderson said the virus hit her so hard that she thought she was dying. In a series of text messages with her daughter Michaela, she told Michaela to take care of her two younger brothers because Anderson didn't think she would make it.

'I told her what songs I wanted to be played at my funeral,” Anderson said.

It all started the week of Nov. 14. That's when SunnyBrook Living Care Center, where Anderson works, reported its first case of COVID. Anderson said she and her co-workers worked extremely hard to protect the residents from infection. They came to work early, stayed late and kept the building spick-and-span.

On Nov. 19, Anderson felt a tickle in her throat. During a staff meeting, she coughed behind her mask. A co-worker looked at her and jokingly said 'COVID.” Anderson didn't think she had caught the virus because she felt fine.

But as the day wore on, she wasn't fine. The cough worsened and by that night she had a pounding headache and couldn't lie down. She went to the business's parking lot early the next morning to get tested and, sure enough, it came back positive for COVID. She said she cannot remember a time she felt so sick.

Her parents had come over for Thanksgiving, but she told them it wasn't safe to be around her, so she talked to them through a window. But even that was a struggle because she couldn't stop coughing.

She suffered from immense fatigue. A simple task like going from the bed to the bathtub required her to stop in the middle to catch her breath.

'If I went to the kitchen, I had to sit in a chair before coming back to the bedroom,” she recalled.

Anderson noticed that COVID was aggravating an existing health problem, an inner-ear disease, and that was giving her vertigo. Her health deteriorated to the point she went to the emergency room the day before Thanksgiving, where she received a few bags of fluid but was not admitted to the hospital.

After a week, Anderson felt like her symptoms were improving and that she had turned the corner on the disease.

Anderson said the hardest part of the experience was missing time with her granddaughter who was born in October.

'I lost a whole month with her where I could only see her through a window,” Anderson said.

Several members of Anderson's family contracted COVID as well, though Anderson suspects it was from other sources and not from her. Her son-in-law believed he contracted it from work, which then spread to his wife, Anderson's daughter. They reported a cough and an overall malaise, but their symptoms were not as bad as Anderson's.

Anderson's middle child Maxx got it the week before Christmas, though he never had any symptoms. He happened to be tested for it since he also works at SunnyBrook. Neither Anderson's youngest son, Mikael, nor her husband, Eric, ever tested positive or had any COVID symptoms.

'I don't understand how Mikael and Eric didn't get it,” Anderson said.

Anderson said she has mostly returned to normal in the months since her COVID diagnosis, though she still is battling some long-term symptoms such as hair loss. She brought up the issue to her hairdresser, who informed her she's not the only COVID patient with that problem.

'The thing I'm most happy about is that I get to see my granddaughter regularly now,” Anderson said.

- Andy Hallman