My journey began mid November 2019 at the age of 70. I was camping in Baja Mexico on my usual 5 month surfing trip. I noticed one day that my hands were feeling a little different than usual. I was getting ready to go surfing but having a little difficulty putting on my wetsuit.
After getting my wetsuit on, I began putting on my booties and realized that I was having a fair amount of difficulty grabbing my booties and sliding them on. I was having pain and a lack of grip strength in my hands.
For the rest of my trip things began to slowly get worse. I workout regularly with weights and realized that I was starting to have a fair amount of pain in my hands and wrists. After my Baja trip ended in January, I was now into the month of February and back home in San Diego. At this time I was beginning to enter some virtual ultra marathons. My wife Roberta is an ultra runner and we thought it would be fun to do a few of these together. At this time COVID started getting serious so all in person ultras were shut down but they turned a lot of the ultras into virtuals which was a good thing.
So I did a few ultras and at this time my feet were doing fine. I was able to do a few thousand miles. Then gradually my feet started to hurt and by now my wrists and hands were starting to have major complications with pain. At times my hands and wrists hurt so bad I was in bed in a fetal position for a day or two at a time wishing someone would cut them off just to remove the pain. Within 3 to 4 months my feet became so painful I cold barely walk around our neighborhood block. My feet felt as though I was walking on jagged rocks mixed with broken glass. Each step was so painful I thought at times I might just have to crawl home.
I was starting to become fatigued from the pain, and not being able to get a decent nights sleep, that I was constantly laying down and having to take siestas throughout the day. By this time my hands and feet were so completely useless. I could barely hold a pencil, brush my teeth or hold a glass of water. Sitting in a chair I was always groaning and squirming every second with no possible way to find a comfortable position. The feeling that I was having was my life was slowly being taken from me.
I began seeing a Rheumatologist and he put me on one medication for a few months and that did not help so he put me on another and that also did not help and then another medication. Nothing was helping. These changes in medications were over a period of 2 1/2 years of trial and error and changing Rheumatologists 3 different times. Meantime my body was slowly deteriorating at a fast pace. I was still in a lot of agonizing pain. The state of my physical deterioration and my mental state from the pain and also the medication was driving both myself and my wonderful wife slightly crazy. There were no good answers from the doctors for relief.
My doctor put me on a program of IV infusions, a drug called Rituxan, 2 rounds every 6 months. Each infusion drip would last anywhere from 3 to 6 hours. The more your body accepted the drug then the less amount of time it would take. The only problem with the drug was it would compromise the immune system which would make a person more vulnerable to sickness or colds for example. After my 1st and 2nd infusion I still had no relief. I was still really messed up.
I had just reached 2 1/2 years of still suffering with a lot of pain then I was hit with COVID. My wife had been monitoring my vitals for I was feeling worse. She took me to Urgent Care 3 times. Each visit we were told by the doctors to stay home, rest and monitor my symptoms. The day after that 3rd visit I was feeling much worse so my wife took me back to Urgent Care. They took x-rays again and found that within 1 day I developed COVID Double Pneumonia.
My wife called our primary doctor to update him on my condition. He told my wife to get me to the hospital right away. When we got there they put me on a gurney and wheeled me away. My wife was devastated thinking that might be the last time she would ever see me again and I as well, thinking I might not ever see her again. By now I was in so much discomfort and starting to have hallucinations. I laid on that gurney for 2 days and 2 nights because the COVID unit at the hospital was completely full with COVID patients and there weren't enough beds for everyone. Each hour and minute on that gurney was a miserable hell. There was a time during all this misery, I thought it would feel right if I could just give up and let life slip away. Then I would think of my wife and what would happen to her if I didn't make it, so I decided to fight with everything I had in me to hang on a little longer. Each time those thoughts came, and there were many, I kept telling myself don't give up. Finally on day 3 they got a room for me and a bed. That bed felt like heaven after being on that very uncomfortable gurney.
I was already on an IV drip of various fluids to keep me hydrated and now they added other things to keep my sodium levels balanced. Next they started pumping me full of the drug Remdesivir and by that night I started feeling somewhat better. They also put me oxygen as my levels dipped a few times. Finally after a day my oxygen reading stabilized and they took me off of it. Had they not gotten my oxygen under control and gotten me on Remdeivir I was on my way to being put on a ventilator. Finally after 6 days I started to recover enough for them to let me go from the hospital, it was a huge relief.
On the COVID floor they have a bell that a person gets to ring when they have beaten COVID and are released from the hospital. The whole time I was in the hospital I never once heard anyone ring the bell. As far as I know I was the only person who made it through and got to ring the bell up until then. When a person gets to ring the bell all the nurses and staff all cheer and clap. They are happy for they were able to save another person. After all this, it has taken me many months to feel somewhat normal but I still have a long way to after 6 months.
That sounds pretty rugged, I hope you are feeling better!
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