Firefighter details long-haul COVID-19 recovery: This virus almost took my life – WMTW Portland

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I’m not the same person that I was, you know, prior to getting covid, that’s for sure, man. You know, in a couple of months it’ll be almost a year that I’ve been gone away from the line. Luis Perea is a firefighter with the city of Davis. It was kind of right at the beginning of the pandemic, and we were starting to see cases in Sacramento and the surrounding areas. But this is the first time that we had heard about our first responders coming down with the virus. We still have to go to the structure, fires and traffic accidents and all the other things are happening. Those expectations of us haven’t changed. And then even when a patient needs like CPR or something like that, then it’s all hands on. The thing about Lewis was he was the fire captain. And so what was interesting about it was the Fire Department already had covid protocols in place. And so what that meant was there was a lead who would go into calls and kind of make that first contact so not everyone would possibly be exposed. And he was that guy. I was the one going in. I had the raincoat. I had the mask. I had the gloves. Three Davis firefighters ended up getting covid, and because of that he started isolating from his family. And that’s when I started to feel unwell. So he had chills. He had body aches. He did get a fever. And then five days later, he tested positive for the coronavirus. His heart started to be really fast, and when he finally was checked out at a clinic, they said, You need to get to the ER now and you know he said, He’s a firefighter so he’s active and he works out all of the time. He was really surprised that it took him down as quickly and as badly as it did. I was definitely shocked that I it really got me. It’s better to be safe than sorry. Sometimes there’s a firefighter. We think, Hey, nothing, nothing could happen to us But it did. He talked about how they wheeled him into the hospital and how there was a ventilator already. They’re already in his room. He didn’t need it, but I think the sight of that really, really worry him. The doctor even told him that he was on the edge of a cliff. I felt like I couldn’t breed. It was it was just like I had no control of my body. I felt my body was weak. I had, like, no strength. I felt like I’d be honest with you. I feel like I was going to die. I felt for the first time that man, this is it. I’m going to be part of a statistic of someone that didn’t make it. I never got to say about it in my life. I got on my phone and I was kind of like hurt because I missed. I had missed Easter with my family, so that was a big deal for me. At that moment. I was like, Oh, man, this is This is tough. So I started pulling pictures and I saw a picture from last year when I was, like, dressed as Batman and kind of like, motivated me to like, um, I got to fight this. Luis was in the hospital for a little while and he eventually got out and quarantined. But the effects of Covid did not go away instantly. For six months, he had trouble breathing he had rapid heartbeat, and then it actually escalated to where he ended up meeting Bernie surgery because he was coughing so much. And so as a fire captain, you really wanted to get back on the front lines, but he couldn’t. It hurts me a lot knowing that, you know, during this fire season, and I can’t be out there with my brothers and sisters, you know, helping out. Louise kept testing positive for the coronavirus for seven months and they would say, Oh, no, no, no, no. I don’t actually have it anymore. He’s part of a study to find out why that’s the case. Why he kept testing positive all of these months later, in January, I spoke with Luis and he had just gotten his vaccine kind of emotional for me because I survived this cove in where it could have been a different situation. It could have been I could have been dead. And to know that I have a vaccine that protects not only the community, but also my you know, my guys and my girls at the firehouse. And having experienced that, that’s what he wanted to keep sharing his story to let people know whatever precautions you can take if you can get the vaccine when you’re eligible to take that seriously, this virus is no joke. This one really, really knocked me out. This one almost took my life. This one actually almost took me away from my wife and kids, and I actually so for the first time in my life, like, Wow, I could die from this. And I spoke with Luis in January. He was really looking forward to possibly going back to work. And you could really tell just talking to him how how things have changed. I can’t wait. I missed my crew. I got I mean, working for City of Davis’s is an amazing place. I love going on cause that’s why I signed up for this. The doctor says You go back to work and that’s gonna be the probably one of the best days of my life. It sounds like things are going well. Usually every time I talked to Luis, we can get on Zoom or Skype immediately because he’s been on light duty. But he says he’s swamped because he’s back