Hudson mom Amy Driscoll shares her 'brutal' encounter after being diagnosed with coronavirus [View all]

[FarPoint]

https://www.cleveland.com/coronavirus/2020/03/hudson-mom-amy-driscoll-shares-her-brutal-encounter-after-being-diagnosed-with-coronavirus.html?fbclid=IwAR2ibu6TXGA1DJ0BQlQV_FFeXQ66akPeAh2CZVig4J4PsLJbKT-It5My-ks

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CLEVELAND, Ohio — Amy Driscoll knew she was in trouble when she woke at 3 a.m. on Thursday and was having trouble breathing.
The 48-year-old Hudson woman’s first thought was the flu; she’d been feeling a little run down and feverish the day before. Still, she was worried.
Her new symptoms — a racing heart, a “terrible” headache and a hard cough — had come on fast. And she’d never felt quite so sick before, even when she was hospitalized for pneumonia, she told The Plain Dealer in an interview Sunday. In the back of her mind, an unwelcome thought surfaced: coronavirus.

Health officials had reported Summit County’s first case of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, only days before. Across the state, the number of cases was steadily climbing as testing increased. People were getting the illness who had no known exposure to it, a phenomenon called “community spread.”

COVID-19 is a respiratory illness with symptoms similar to those of the flu — fever, cough and shortness of breath — that has infected 37 people in Ohio as of Sunday night.There are no medications approved to treat it and wider testing only became available last week in Ohio.
Driscoll texted her cousin Molly, a pediatric nurse who works at University Hospitals Ahuja Medical Center, to get some advice.
Her temperature was 100.2. She was “struggling to take in air.” She told Molly she was worried she might be getting pneumonia again.
The cousin told Driscoll she needed to go to the hospital, but to call first. Emergency room staff at UH Ahuja told Driscoll to call the Ohio Department of Health’s coronavirus hotline first. No one answered.....Molly told Driscoll to sit tight and called the emergency department herself. She told them her cousin was coming in.

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