SIX friends whose names I will not reveal to protect their privacy recently “graduated” from COVID after over 14 days of home quarantine while being managed by my St. Luke’s BGC pulmo doctor, Anne Estrella.
Dr. Anne was the pulmo who attended to me from the moment I was confined at the emergency room of St. Luke’s BGC last March 31. Of all her patients before and after, I somehow stuck to her memory because I had initially objected to the idea that I would undergo CT scan, insisting that if it had to be done then I had to be sedated.
She had to gently explain to me that the donut-shaped CT scan machine is unlike the tube-shaped MRI machine and so I did not have to worry about claustrophobia. It was only then that I relented and agreed.
After my discharge on April 12, I had to tele-consult with Dr. Anne for three sessions, as she made sure I was fully recovering from the pulmonary embolism and the COVID pneumonia that I had when I was admitted. Her management includes having me undergo one CT scan (with contrast) one month after discharge followed by another one (plain/high resolution) two months later. The scans revealed how well my lungs were recovering from the trauma of COVID. She did not prescribe that I undergo pulmo rehab because I had returned to my regular high intensity interval training routines that were interrupted by COVID, but she had me undergo a Pulmo Function Test (PFT), which consisted of you sitting inside a glass booth while you breathed in and out of a tube so that a computer could calculate the volume of air you inhaled and exhaled. She describes my results as “near perfect,” which I guess isn’t bad for (at that time) a 58-year-old.
And so, it was inevitable that when friends called me on separate occasions to complain of flu-like symptoms or to tell me they had tested positive, my reaction was to set them up with Dr. Anne immediately so their issues could be addressed. That this is done as early as possible in the course of the viral infection could very well spell the difference between end of quarantine and end of life.
So now, we are all survivors. I joke that I am the “summa cum laude” because I went through the worst; magna cum laude honors goes to an 80-year-old genteel lady who had a moderate case of the virus. Cum laude honors go to three friends — one who is 58, one who is 57 and one who is in his late 30s but is a heavy smoker. Honorable mention goes to a 75-year-old who had the least issues with COVID and is back to whacking tennis balls in his spare time.
I don’t know if I should mention here that all six of them were fully vaccinated (same brand!) when they came down with the virus, while I was unvaccinated (though I am now). Can you a hazard a guess as to the vaccine brand these six got?
Thanks to Dr. Anne and the lessons that the medical world has learned from over a year of battling the virus, the seven of us are able to tell our stories to friends and, more critically, provide suggestions on who to consult with at a time like this.
Vaccines work, and the virus is not a kiss of death. We can attest to that.
Stay safe everyone.
