ATHABASCA — The goal of the COVID-19 vaccines is to allow people who get the virus to hopefully recover at home, but sometimes the symptoms still require a hospital visit.
One local woman, who has had all her vaccinations, wore her mask, did her hand hygiene and followed all the protocols and mandates still found herself in the Athabasca Healthcare Centre for a week starting Jan. 14 with double viral pneumonia caused by the Omicron variant.
“I’m way better than I was when I first came here,” said Kathi Gilmore, 73, in a telephone interview Jan. 19. “But I’m not as good as I was.”
Gilmore said she has never had pneumonia before and knew little about it.
“Apparently there’s not just one pneumonia, there’s all different kinds,” she said. “This one is triggered by Omicron according to Dr. Michael (Burger).”
She said after Christmas while it was so cold, she only made a few trips into town but she’s unsure where she picked up the virus.
“I wasn't socializing or anything,” she said. “But at the beginning of last week I wasn’t feeling good. I said, ‘Okay, I bet I’ve got it.’”
Gilmore said she didn’t want to brave the freezing weather to get a COVID-19 test and decided to isolate and let it run its course, but her husband Chet brought it up during a phone consultation with his own personal physician who said to bring her to the hospital.
“And so, I came into emerg,” said Gilmore. “The doctor on call checked me out and he said, ‘Well, why are you here?’ He said at that point there really isn’t much you can do for it, you go home, you drink stuff, you take honey and so on.”
But Gilmore wasn’t getting better, in fact, she got worse, which prompted her husband to bring her back that night, Jan. 14 — she was admitted and stayed a week, the goal of being vaccinated; to spend little to no time in hospital.
“Sometimes you get it in one lung, but I have it in both and your lungs fill up with this green, slimy fluid and you can’t breathe,” she said. “Well, you can breathe, but it’s really an effort.”
To get the “green, slimy fluid” out you must cough it up, which is difficult Gilmore said, and causes sore muscles from coughing so hard.
“They’ve been x-raying me every day which is how they can tell where it is,” she said. “Sometimes you get it in part of your lungs, but mine went all the way down to the bottom of my lungs.”
As of the interview, Gilmore was off oxygen and her blood pressure was good, she said.
“My taste was not real great, but I think it's coming back a little bit,” said Gilmore. “Same thing with smell but it's a little hard to tell, I haven't been having anything really to smell.”
For as sick as she is, she's even more angry.
“I just want to emphasize I thought I had done everything,” she said. “And I just get so angry when I think about people that for whatever self-absorbed reasons are making light of this.”
She doesn’t see the mandates and being asked to wear a mask or get a vaccine as an infringement on her freedoms at all.
“I don’t know why people think that they’re giving up their freedoms by having to do that,” she said. “I think it has to do with their self-concept and wanting to lash out at something they feel powerless about.”
She credits the vaccine with preventing her from being sicker than she got.
“If I was one of the 89 per cent of other people that had (the vaccine), it would have been the right response, but mine happened to get worse,” said Gilmore.
And while she spent her time in the hospital, she developed an even deeper respect for the staff.
“The hospital staff have to be very careful not to discriminate against the anti-vaxxers and vaxxers when they're treating, which must be really hard,” she said.
And the amount of extra work it takes just to bring her a cup of coffee both amazes and concerns her with the amount of plastic being tossed in the garbage.
“Any nurse, anyone that comes (in), before they step through the door they have to put on the gown, they have to put on those booty things, they have to put on one of those big fancy (N-95) masks, they have to put one of the plastic (face shields) on and then they can come in,” said Gilmore. “And then when they go out, they take every bit of that off and throw it in the garbage.”
Gilmore wanted to tell her story to help others understand COVID-19 is not only real, that the Omicron variant is here and to hopefully understand they need to avoid it.
“I don't necessarily need to be in the newspaper, but I just wanted to let people know what it's like,” she said.
