Melissa's Interview in the Huron Daily Tribune Newspaper....
https://www.michigansthumb.com/news/article/Tuscola-County-nurse-battles-coronavirus-illness-15192788.php#dfpAd-dfp-1UPPER THUMB — Registered Nurse Melissa Leggieri didn’t have plans to kick back and chill during the coronavirus pandemic, but those are doctors' orders now as she fights to regain her life from the coronavirus.
Leggieri, who is currently in the COVID Unit at McLaren Bay Region, is approaching day 10 of her battle.
“I am a nurse and know what’s going on, and I’m scared,” Leggieri said. “I’m in the hospital alone. I can’t imagine being a lay person and maybe not understanding everything that’s going on. It’s a lot of tests and poking and prodding. Just when we fix one thing, another pops up.”
Leggieri is a public health nurse with the Tuscola County Health Department, and she doesn’t know where, how or when she contracted the virus. According to Leggieri, the health department was quick to haveLeggieri said she adhered to the state’s stay-at-home order, only going shopping for essentials and using extra precautions such as wearing gloves when pumping gas and using hand sanitizer religiously.
She even sent her son to stay with his father, because she felt there was less of a chance for her son to contract the illness when staying with two people who are working from home, versus with her and her boyfriend, who was still working.
“No one I know is sick,” Leggieri said. “But, as with anyone, carriers can be asymptomatic. That’s what aggravated me about skeptics. They don’t understand that a person can be carrying the disease and not appear sick, may not even get sick, but still spread the disease.”
Timeline
Leggieri’s symptoms began April 1, when she first noticed some sneezing and sinus congestion. She said at first she believed it was seasonal allergies. On April 2, her congestion worsened and she started have a feeling of general malaise.
“I had this tickle in my throat making me cough and I just felt a little blah,” she said. “I was conflicted, do I call in for allergies or go to work.”
Leggieri reached out to her boss, who decided it was best that she stayed home as a precautionary measure. On Friday, Leggieri said her cough worsened, but it was still manageable. However, she started to feel aching in her hips, thighs and upper arms, which she initially brushed off to a recent power walking session, but it didn’t explain the aching in her arms. She also started to feel extremely cold. its staff work remotely, conducting most of their work via telephone or computer. She said she has only seen a handful of clients since mid-March.
“On Saturday, I slept all day, freezing the whole time with terrible chills and just incredible aching from head to toe,” she said. “The coughing was heavier — it was a gagging cough — and my head was pounding from all the coughing. I was also very nauseated. I was fairly certain then that I was really sick and pretty sure it was the coronavirus.”
Leggieri reached out to her supervisor, who wanted her tested for the virus. However, she still didn’t feel sick enough to go to the hospital, but wasn’t well enough to drive anywhere. Instead, her colleague came to her house, donning the proper personal protective equipment, and tested Leggieri on her front porch.
“I am sure the neighbors were wondering,” Leggieri joked.
Over the next three days Leggieri’s condition worsened, starting with her fever spiking to 102.9 degrees several times between Monday and Wednesday.
“I was getting very concerned Monday night as despite my best efforts to hydrate, I was so nauseous even liquids were a challenge and I wasn’t putting out much urine,” she said. “My lower and mid back were killing me.”
Leggieri had a virtual visit with her doctor, who provided her with various comfort medications such as Zofran for nausea, Tessalon Perles for the cough, and Zithromax and an inhaler for shortness of breath.
“She was also concerned because my blood pressure was fairly low and I hadn’t been taking two of my three blood pressure meds for three days,” Leggieri said.
When Leggieri had her medications picked up, she also had a pulse oximeter put in with the order to measure her oxygen saturation, which later revealed her oxygen saturation was down to 87%. A safe oxygen saturation is considered above 90% and a healthy person should be at 100%. The combination of low oxygen saturation and low blood pressure forced Leggieri to seek hospitalization, first by reaching out and giving them advance notice of her diagnosis.
Hospitalization
Leggieri said despite the excellent efforts of the hospital staff — which she said have been extremely attentive, professional, helpful and caring — she has been in complete agony at several points.
“The strange thing is over the course of the eight days so far, there were periods of time I thought I was improving,” she said. “Then there would be a new or worsening symptom, like the fever. A person usually gets a fever, they medicate a few days, and it improves and goes away. It doesn’t typically appear, get better, get way worse, slowly drop, get way worse, magically disappear and come back two days later.”
Leggieri said there were times she felt OK and other times the nausea was so bad she was afraid to move out of fear for vomiting.
“At home, what helped was a shower,” she said. “I took several a day and just laid in the bottom of the shower. It helped with the ache, the chills and the cough.”
However, that relief was short lived, and Leggieri couldn’t stay in the shower all day, and now hospitalized, it wasn’t an option.
“I desperately wish I could, but cannot for now,” she said. “Ice chips, oxygen and an adjustable bed are helpful, but I wish I had about 10 pillows because my back is aching from laying around the last seven or eight days.”
Reflecting
Leggieri had been paying attention to the coronavirus spread.
“I have been paying pretty close attention to the virus since it started,” she said. “I’m interested because I’m a public health nurse, and in a previous life, I worked for a large international automotive engineering company and I have friends all over the world. My friend of 20-plus years, Chris, is an Englishman living and working in Wuhan, and he was giving us all regular updates on the situation.”
Leggieri said she followed the disease’s spread on social media, through the Facebook pages of her friends living around the world. She also had been monitoring it on the Johns Hopkins University and Medicine realtime map, receiving weekly and daily conference calls with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
“I was well up-to-date with the progression of the disease,” she said. “It’s hard to implement and enforce all these recommendations, but the general public has to share in the responsibility. It’s not going to stop spreading, if people don’t stop spreading it. Which means we all stay home. It’s that simple.”
Leggieri said if she did it over again, she would have worn a mask everywhere she went.
“I don’t ever want this or anything remotely like it again,” she said. “This is honestly the sickest I’ve ever been in 50 years of life. My body is in more pain than it was after 26 hours of labor to deliver a nearly 9-pound baby. I’m a fairly tough cookie, but this is tougher. When I get out of the hospital I’ll be wearing a mask wherever I go until this virus has stopped, including outside on my walks and bike rides.”
Leggieri said people living in the Upper Thumb are lucky in the sense that it is a rural community, with people spread further apart and less population density. However, they need to be mindful that the virus is here and they shouldn’t let their guard down.
“They need to stay home, disinfect, wash their hands, avoid touching their face,” she said. “Staying at home goes for the kids too. Your kids can go for a walk on a trail, just not with the neighbor kids. They can play in the yard, just not with the neighbor kids. The virus is here. It’s very opportunistic. It’s nothing to mess with. This is something I would only have thought existed in Robin Cook novels. This is the sickest I’ve been in my entire life.”
Future
The battle for Leggieri isn’t over. Hopefully over the next several days she will overcome the coronavirus.
“This is a medical challenge to keep up with and keep me out of the ICU and off a ventilator,” she said. “I was hoping to be in my home and in my bed by Easter Sunday, but that may be wishful thinking.
However, there are mixed reports on whether people can become reinfected with the virus. She said her boyfriend will now have to be in quarantine for 14 days after her symptoms resolve, and she doesn’t know when she will be able to safely bring her 12-year-old son home.
“He’s already been gone a month and it’s killing me,” she said.
