‘Nothing flu-like about it’: Huntsville COVID-19 patient calls for action

It was the worst experience of Jennifer Alexis's life.

Hands down. It was awful," said Alexis, 49, a Huntsville resident and disaster relief professional. There is nothing flu-like about it at all."

She contracted COVID-19 in March and, after a two-week battle that she said nearly cost her life, she recovered, but not without continued health complications.

And she noted that while much has since been learned about the virus and its symptoms, there is still a lot to be done to combat the related community health and social vulnerabilities.

Alexis's case was deemed community-acquired, though it's still uncertain how she came into contact with the virus, and it also wasn't lab-confirmed because tests were reserved for front-line health-care workers back then.

Her case was instead confirmed after over-the-phone interviews with a slew of health professionals.

They marked me down as a moderate COVID case," she said. And I was told to stay home."

She noted that the first week of illness was unpredictable.

Five hours of the worst headache in her life could be followed by horrible diarrhea or bouts of body-shaking chills.

But the second week was worse.

You can go from literally feeling like you've just gotten better to your life being in danger within six to 12 hours," she said. When it goes bad, it goes bad very, very quickly."

Alexis, who had contracted other coronaviruses in the past, said the pain, delirium, restricted breathing and other complications caused by COVID-19 were like nothing she had ever experienced.

Even her professional life had never had such an effect on her.

I've been through hurricanes, earthquakes, all kinds of things, and I don't think I've ever been so scared," she said.

But she stayed home because, as a single parent, she did not want to leave her daughter, 9, alone, and felt certain no one would babysit a child from a home exposed to the virus.

She argued that there was an urgent need for more community support services, not only to increase wellness checks for those in isolation, but also to provide emergency home care, aid and temporary shelter.

She also noted that solutions to Muskoka's continued housing crisis needed to consider pandemic response capacity, such as more space for family members to isolate away from others, especially for low-income households.

Alexis did eventually head to the hospital, but only after the virus had run its course.

The virus had killed her sense of smell and dampened her sense of taste, reduced circulation in her fingers and caused them to swell, blister and crack, and caused continued shortness of breath.

But the persistent chest pain sent her to the emergency room.

She said the pains got so bad she thought she was having a heart attack.

Instead, it was atypical pleurisy, which affects tissue around the lungs.

There was no evidence of active virus in me, but there was evidence of the damage the virus had done," she said.

She now worried about what she deemed the false sense of security created by relaxed COVID-19 restrictions in Ontario.

The risk hasn't gone down. It's that our capacity to respond to the consequences has gone up," she said. It's just as deadly and dangerous."

Muskoka had reported 32 lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases as of Aug. 18.

But Dr. Charles Gardner, medical officer of health for Simcoe-Muskoka, noted that surveillance efforts on any infectious disease usually pick up only 10 per cent or fewer of cases.

And he said that could be because people either didn't seek assessment or weren't able to access assessment, especially early on.

There would have been many people with symptoms who simply couldn't get tested," said Gardner. Some of them were, undoubtedly, cases."

Barriers to COVID-19 tests have since been reduced, as assessment centres are available by appointment in Bracebridge and Huntsville and drop-in drive-thru test events now happen across Muskoka for both symptomatic and asymptomatic patients.

Contact your primary care provider, or call the assessment centres at 1-888-383-7009.

STORY BEHIND THE STORY: We reached out to a recovered COVID-19 patient to learn about her experience and hear her perspective. We hope her story emphasizes the seriousness of the virus as well as the importance of improving health and social resources.