“I thought I was going to die!” One Woman’s Story of COVID-19

This week on the Minnesota Native News Health Report, a first-hand account from someone who is still recovering from Covid.

Sharon Walker is a nurse practitioner with the Indian Health Service. “I live in Cass Lake Minnesota and I’m enrolled at White Earth.” said Walker

Sharon is 62 and healthy. She never smoked, had no pre-existing conditions. But she didn’t feel well at the end of work on Wednesday July 8.

“I have to change my gown and mask and all this stuff and sometimes you get kind of sweaty and stuff. So I felt like I was a little more sweaty that day. And then Thursday when I went into work July 9, I didn’t feel good. And they did a COVID test which was a one to two-hour test for employees. I just had a high fever. I just felt like weak and nauseated and tired and they said, you can go home, we’ll call you with your results. They called me 2 hours later and said Sharon you’re positive for Covid.” said Walker

“I thought oh, okay. I’m pretty healthy. I wear protective gear and I wash my hands all the time. I was just surprised that I had it. And when I woke up on July 10, I had no energy to really walk normally I was slow, I was sluggish. I told my husband to take me to Bemidji ER. I don’t want to die here because I knew I had COVID and, and I know it can get serious and I got really really sick whereas just vomiting had diarrhea. I was weak. I had a fever a cough. I also had a sore throat. They put me in a back E.R. room right away. They gave me a gown to put on. Started an I.V. on me. And first, the doctor thought he was gonna send me home and I just didn’t feel good. I just felt like I don’t think I can go home like this because I was so weak.” she said.

“He told me I just had a cold and you can go home and quarantine for 14 days. And I told him I don’t have a cold. I have COVID and I’m sick. Then I got admitted and they put me in a Covid room with negative pressure. The nurses put on protective gear. Every time they came in they had to take their gown off and put it in the trash inside my room. The garbage can was right by the door. They had signs up that said no visitors. I was alone in there.” said Walker

“I was just awful. I couldn’t even do nothing. And every time I moved my head, turned my head I would cough I had a really bad cough I would turn move anything on my body and anything I moved, I would cough. And the weird thing is I could not caough anything up. But I just kept coughing.” she said.

“I felt like my lungs got worse when I was in the hospital and I was in the hospital five days. And I kept asking for a chest X ray, can I get a chest X ray feel like my lungs. There’s something wrong. Where I wasn’t. I was feeling like short of breath where every time I talked, I was catching, you know, I couldn’t catch my breath. And every time I spoke, I would cough and I was feeling short of breath. I had bone pain in my bones that was just painful.” said Walker

“During the night like Sunday night to Monday morning, like three in the morning. I couldn’t breathe. I just felt like there’s something wrong. I just can’t breathe and the scariest thing is I didn’t want to go on a ventilator. Because I know a lot of the Southwest, Southwest Indians, A lot of them died.” said Walker

“The doctor who admitted me. He saw me that Monday. he pulled the oxygen, the nasal cannula off my face. And he said look at your 95% you don’t need oxygen. As soon as he pulled it off, the alarm went off, which meant my oxygen dropped down to 80s He said I’m gonna send you home you just need to quarantine for 14 days. And he said you don’t need this oxygen. So he was kind of rude to me that doctor was. He had no respect for me.” said Walker

“And that’s the way he talked to me. And I was sick and I had somebody treat me like that who put their hand on my face and take that nasal count off my face my oxygen away from me and throw it aside and tell me I don’t need it. Well, yeah, I said, that’s, that that was uncalled for,” said Walker. “They have an Indian advocate at the hospital and I made a comment to him about how I was treated.” she said.

“I thought I was gonna die in the hospital and I thought I was gonna die when I got home that first night. That first night I was scared to go to sleep. Then we had a storm that knocked the power out. And so my oxygen concentrator went off. I was in the bathroom and I couldn’t breathe. I started like hyperventilating.   And I had a portable tank because they gave me portable tanks also, and my husband brought that to me and they use that for oxygen because I had a hard time breathing or shorter breath for a long time. I also got a COVID rash, which went on the bottom of my feet, my hands and my chin, some in my cheeks.” said Walker

When we talked at the end of August, Sharon Walker said she was feeling better. She expected to return to work after Labor Day. 

“It’s a mysterious illness. Everybody is affected differently by Covid. It gets into your body and it attacks whatever it wants to. ” she said.

Sharon Walker’s son and husband tested positive after she got sick. Her husband had no symptoms, and her son had mild ones and didn’t need to be hospitalized.

Laurie Stern reporting for Minnesota Native News