My Experience Last Month in the Hospital During the Cornona Virus

Last month, actually April 9th, I had a cough and a high fever and was very nauseous. I could hardly keep my food down. I called my doctor at the NJ shore and he told me to go to the ER at the medical center in Toms River, NJ to be tested for the Corona or Chinese virus as Trump calls it.

I went by ambulance and could hardly walk. i could hardly breathe. My heart was beating irregularly. I was taken by two policemen EMT's in a police ambulance to community medical center ER. I got there and was wheeled in with a wheel chair. The nurse at the door of the ER put a thermometer in my mouth and said you have a high temperature, I was then taken to an isolation ward to a room alone and put in there and later on a few hours later given the test for the virus. This was Monday night at about 9pm. I had been rushed there at 3pm. The PA came in after my x ray and said it showed that I had heart failure. I am a 65 year old male with hypertension and diabetes and heart failure now. I thought this might be my last week on earth, if I had the virus. The nurse said I would get the results in a few days.

I was kept in isolation until about 10pm and then taken to the heart and surgical ward on the third floor of the medical center and had a masl on. Nobody came in my room without masks and gowns and PPE. I felt so alone. No visitors were allowed. My mother is still alive at 90 years old. I have a sister near me with a husband and two grown children and a brother in CA in Napa. I felt so alone and scared. I was put in a single room in isolation and kept thinking I might have the virus. I had no appetite.

They gave me my food on cardboard trays and plates and threw them away after I ate. I had been in that hospital many times before. This time was different. Nobody came in my room. Doctors and nurses poked their heads in and talked to me from the other side of the room. The nurse would call me every hour on the phone to see how I was. Everybody was afraid of getting the virus. I was scared too. I could hardly eat all week and was still so sick to my stomach.

They gave me a drug for nausea in my IV that is used for terminally ill cancer patients receiving chemo and radiation for nausea. it helped after two days to get me to eat a little more. The doctors told me I had bad heart failure and a bad back and was also on pain killers for my back. It was such a scary experience. One nurse came in with a mask and visor and gown and asked me if I was ever there before. She recognized me. I didn't recognize her with all the gear on, just her voice. I said, Are you Anne? She said yes. I said I know your voice from my operation last summer. They all looked like aliens from outer space and not human anymore taking care of me.

I had to do some of my own nursing and measure my own urine from the urinal and write the amounts on the board with markers on the wall. it was terrible. I never saw such a thing. I still didn't get the results of the virus test after being there for 3 days. It was a very scary experience. I got bad chest pains and thought I was having a heart attack, A team of doctors and nurses came around me and gave me an injection and cured me.

Nobody could visit me. I just had the hospital phone and my cell phone. After the fourth day they said I got a little better and could go home. I was supposed to get the results of the test by 2pm. I had such high anxiety waiting for the results. I thought i was going out of my mind. At 4pm the nurse came in and said she called her command center and they said I could go home as long as I promised to quarrantine myself for 14 days and go straght home and sign some legal papers to that effect. She said they would call me that night or the next day with the results of the test. I was so work out and scared. They sent me home with a mask and my driver friend met me at the front door of the hospital. They gave me a mask for him.

He drove me home and I got home and was so tired. I waited up and still no call came with the results of the test. The next morning at 10am the phone rang and I jumped out of my chair. They said this is the command center at the hospital and we are pleased to tell you that you tested negative for the virus. I was so happy. I jumped for joy. I called my mother and family and all my friends and told them.

It was a horrible week and ordeal. NJ is still bad with the virus. I am just glad I don't have it and never got it. I stayed in for 14 days since I was in the hospital where many had died from it. The photo in my story is my favoirte bed and breakfast in Cape May where I have gone for 8 years.

It is supposed to be haunted. I am glad I didn't die from the virus and join the ghosts who haunt my favoite vacation spot for the past 8 years. I am one of the lucky ones in NJ who has survived this horrible virus with all of my underlying conditions.