Waterford – MaryLou Gannotti, who is slowly emerging from a COVID-19 crisis, wants people to know that the disease can lurk without warning, even if you are the image of health.
If there was ever a healthy family, Gannottis would be. MaryLou described herself, her husband Greg, 56, and her two sons, Jake, 19, and Luke, 14, as “a family of fitness enthusiasts.” who participates – and in the case of Greg, the coach – in wrestling and enjoys outdoor activities, including paddleboarding.
But at the end of December 2020, all four went down with COVID-19.
MaryLou also wants people to know “that a meeting that can last a second, 30 minutes, an hour lasts, but if you think you’re safe with that very good friend, you may not be very well.”
How did it happen
Gannottis suspects they contracted COVID-19 from a friend of Greg’s because they spent some time together. MaryLou said her son started clearing his throat almost immediately after Christmas, although he had no cough. This seemed a little strange, but she didn’t think much about it.
Then, on December 28, MaryLou got up to go to work at Coastal Connecticut Research, a medical clinic in New London. She said she was tired when she woke up, but attributed this feeling to the fact that she was the mother of the family and recently finished her vacation. “I am the one who cooks, cleans, makes shops. So I said, “You know what, I was just deleted.” I thought I could have the blues because I didn’t get to see my mother or other relatives during Christmas. “
While working that Monday, MaryLou received a text from Greg.
“He revealed to me that his friend’s husband gave positive results to COVID-19. He said, “We’ll all be tested,” and I thought to myself, “Don’t tell me the frog in my baby’s neck is COVID,” MaryLou said.
She then told her boss, who sent her home and shut down the facility for three days. All her colleagues gave negative results. Greg and Luke learned positive results Wednesday that week; MaryLou and Jake, Thursday. None of them really thought he was sick until he received positive results.
MaryLou harbored some distrust; her family was healthy and had followed every protocol. This is a family of fighters and it would be good, she decided. She was encouraged when, in the first days after a positive test, the symptoms were not overwhelming.
“Initially I thought to myself, I can take a cruise through this, it’s like your basic cold. Well, guess what, I was wrong, “she said. “In a few days, my lungs became so compromised. We got (temperatures) every day, none of us ever had anything higher than 98.6 (degrees), but we got chills, we had some body aches, we had a headache. The biggest struggle for me was my breathing: I felt like a stone on my chest. And I felt like someone had a rope around my lungs and they were tightening the rope. ”
Her sons and wife were not as ill. It has lost its taste and smell; they didn’t. Jake had the easiest case. Luke felt a tightness in his chest, but, as MaryLou said, she was 14 and she was 50, “so she’s stronger than me.” Greg had what appeared to be a wet cough, while MaryLou had trouble producing a cough – “It was just pain. And tightness. ”
By her own admission, she should have gone to the hospital to take extra breath, as a nurse in her doctor’s office told her after the ordeal.
“My concern as a mother and wife is, what happens if I leave my family? I almost felt like if I left, I wouldn’t come back, “she said.” I am a lifelong Catholic. They say that the voice in your head is sometimes the voice of God, and the voice told me, “Stay home. You will succeed. I didn’t know I needed extra oxygen, but by the grace of God I was able to get through. “
While MaryLou said she had some persistent problems, she and the rest of her family were released around January 7-9.
“I had the flu, bronchitis before, I had diseases that brought me down, but then I come back. This is not yours, stay in bed for three days, then come back, “she said. “This is yours, stay in bed for nine days, start getting up and then go back to your head. I don’t move as much as before, I try to build my lungs back, I went back for a walk with my dog, which was starting to tear the house apart. I think getting into this with good health helps with recovery, but it certainly didn’t ease the virus. He still divides and conquers ”.
COVID cocktail
Gannottis tried a litany of remedies while recovering with varying degrees of success. MaryLou took to Facebook to say she was out of breath and asked how to alleviate it. A friend of hers, who is an occupational therapist and has worked with patients with COVID-19, told her to get on her stomach. Another friend said to practice breathing yoga.
MaryLou continued her own research on YouTube, where she found a doctor featured on the BBC who describes a breathing technique and also recommends spending time on your stomach.
“My friend told me to spend at least two hours a day on my stomach. Don’t sleep on your back, don’t lie on your back, “said MaryLou. “I made everyone in this house do belly time.” At that moment, I almost felt that all I could do was sleep. I slept up to 12-15 hours a day. I didn’t have the energy, but I knew that the only way to get through this was to sleep and shut out the outside world. I didn’t want anyone to share somber statistics with me. ”
Another friend of MaryLou, who is a nurse, told her that she should start taking a certain amount of aspirin for children every day, because people are more prone to blood clots with COVID-19. MaryLou finally started a diet, which she calls the “COVID cocktail”, of vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc and vitamin B12. A naturist told him to start taking black cumin oil as well.
“While this was happening, I just wanted to survive. I knew I could live or die. I knew the statistics with this disease, I also knew that I want to live “, she said. “I’m not saying people who die don’t have the will to live, but I knew I wanted to get out of it.”
Patrick Cahill, a doctor at Backus Hospital, described how devastating COVID-19 can be for a family living under the same roof.
“Most of the time, until the first person knows they have it, they have already passed it on to the rest of the household,” he said. The highest period of risk of transmission is about two days before the onset of symptoms. Until someone is symptomatic, people often try to either express the reality that they are VOCID. They will say it’s a cold, they might wait a few days, then they might be tested when things get worse, and by that time, everyone they live with has probably been exposed. ”
Cahill confirmed that the healthier a person is when faced with the virus, the more likely they are to have a speedy recovery. He also said that he understood MaryLou’s decision not to go to the hospital.
“It’s completely understandable and there’s nothing anyone should ever blame, especially if I’m generally in excellent health,” Cahill said. “The thing I try to tell people shortly after they’ve been diagnosed, which would probably be very helpful, is to see if they can buy a pulse oximeter or borrow one from a friend just to monitor. oxygen level. ”
He also advised people to get vaccinated as soon as possible and to be careful if they fall into an eligibility group.
As people look for alternative methods to treat COVID-19, Cahill recommends that they consult their doctors. And he said that self-pronunciation or putting on a stomach is one of the strategies “we tell everyone in the hospital to do it, because this was a very easy and non-invasive, non-toxic method of improving results”.
The kindness of others
While the time spent inside and struggling with her health was grim for MaryLou, she said the people who contacted her were “angels” and significantly helped her through the trial. The kindness of the strangers even saved a birthday.
In addition to the entire family that caught the coronavirus during the holiday season, it happened to be interrupted by Luke’s birthday on January 2, and MaryLou on the 50th on January 12.
“January is already a rotten month of birthdays, but do you want to talk about the worst month of birth ever?” Said Mary Lou. “It simply came to our notice then. I went to church last Sunday and a friend told me, “It’s good to see you,” and I said, “It’s good to be seen.” ”
On Luke’s birthday, the family ordered the delivery of food from Walmart, including a cake. But the cake wasn’t there. Greg contacted the delivery man, but Walmart wouldn’t let her bring the cake back, so he took one for the family and put it in front of their door.
“My husband gave her great advice to cover the costs. A stranger I didn’t know took money out of her own pocket and delivered a birthday cake. There are things like that, said MaryLou through tears, which suffocate me because I say that Jesus shows up when people do such things. We didn’t even know this woman, but she knew our order had been deceived and she went and chose a birthday cake for our children, because we couldn’t. ”
Hope and family
MaryLou mentioned a striking piece in the family’s history: her great-grandmother, Carmina DiBiasio, died of the flu in Italy in 1919, during another world pandemic.
“He was 32 years old when he died, leaving behind my grandfather Andrea, his brother Tommasso and sisters Concettina and Caterina,” she said. “My grandfather was about to turn 11 when he died, and he was the eldest of her four children. He immigrated to the United States at the age of 16 and much of it was related to his evil stepmother. “
Gannottis is the last warning story in MaryLou’s eyes. She said the coronavirus is insidious – it can catch anyone at any time.
However, MaryLou said she wanted to give people hope.
“There is hope in kindness, there is hope in compassion, the wonderful things that people prayed for us, sent us messages, my brothers checked in with me, my sister, my mother, my aunt,” she said. “We had cousins praying for us. We appreciate people praying for us. I don’t want to sound evangelical, but it makes a difference. ”