Thread by @DavidLat

1/ Nine months ago today (3/16), I was admitted to @nyulangone because I couldn’t breathe, thanks to what turned out to be #COVID19 (but we weren’t sure at the time — it was early in the #CoronavirusPandemic).

Text exchange with my husband Zach that day:

2/ My detailed texts are essentially like a diary of my #COVID19 hospital stay. More from March 16:

3/ At the time, I didn’t realize how bad #COVID19 would get for me. When I got the positive #COVID test result that night — from Dr. Luke O’Donnell, one of the many great doctors who treated me, God bless him — here’s what I texted Zach:

4/ It was probably NOT for the best that I got #COVID19 so early. Survival rates climbed in the subsequent weeks and months, as doctors got better at treating it. See this @nytimes piece about a great paper by @leorahorwitzmd:

nyti.ms/3oZlmNP

5/ That night (3/16), I posted on Facebook to let my contacts know so they could get tested if they came down with #COVID19 symptoms. As noted, I was one of the first 1,000 confirmed cases in New York — which has now had more than 809K cases and 35K deaths.

6/ I’ll post more of these texts in the days ahead, looking back 9 months to the day on my #COVID19 hospital stay. (This was pretty much it for March 16; I went to bed after getting the positive #COVID result and posting on Facebook.)

7/ Actually, it looks like I tweeted this a little later in the evening of 3/16 (12:09 a.m. on 3/17). It wasn't quite accurate; back then, you needed to have contact with a known case AND symptoms. So hard to get tested back then!

https://twitter.com/DavidLat/status/1239765732088479744

8/ In the afternoon on March 17, so 9 months ago today, I posted my first detailed thread describing what it felt like to be hospitalized with #COVID19 (short answer: pretty terrible) -- and the thread went viral.

https://twitter.com/DavidLat/status/1239997293086027778?s=20

9/ On the bright side, 3/17 is also when I got this awesome tweet from @cher (but I didn't learn about it until later; at this point I was just sending outbound tweets, not checking replies, so I had no idea I had gone viral).

https://twitter.com/cher/status/1240092704530259969?s=20

10/ Otherwise, 3/17 was pretty uneventful. I spent the whole day in bed. I think this is the day they gave me the antiviral Kaletra (lopinavir+ritonavir) -- at the time viewed as promising, later shown to be unhelpful in treating moderate to severe #COVID19.

11/ March 18-19 involved the usual: lying in bed, getting supplemental oxygen, and watching movies, like “Crazy Rich Asians” and “The Intern.” (My room at @nyulangone had a big flat-screen TV, with a tablet you could use from bed to order meals or movies.)

12/ Around this time, I was given hydroxychloroquine (remember that?) and azithromycin. This didn’t get mentioned much in the media coverage, but HCQ can give you TERRIBLE diarrhea - very inconvenient when you’re too weak to go to the bathroom by yourself.

13/ It was tough for the overworked staff to respond immediately to every pressing of the call button. I tried a few times to go to the bathroom by myself, but would wind up collapsing on the floor, tangled up in the cords from the oxygen and the IV.

14/ I was lucky to have a private bathroom in my room that was maybe 5 feet from my bed, but I was too weak to move that distance by myself without collapsing. Eventually I resorted to using a yellow plastic bedpan — a highly unpleasant experience. #COVID19

15/ I also used a plastic urinal canister when I had to pee, since going to the bathroom was such a production. That also wasn’t fun — I’d often end up getting urine on myself — but it wasn’t nearly as unpleasant or stressful as the bedpan.

16/ Wearing a mask can be annoying — but being in the hospital with #Covid_19 is so much worse, trust me.

So please #StayAtHome, #WearAMask, and avoid getting #COVID19!

17/ Nine months ago today (3/21) was when I was intubated - put on a ventilator, because I couldn’t breathe on my own thanks to #COVID19.

Does it feel like 9 months ago? I don’t know. My sense of time is so off in the #CoronavirusPandemic.

18/ Here’s a text exchange I had with my husband Zach that started before I was intubated. When he texted on 3/21, I was already on the ventilator (but he didn’t find out about that until around 12:45 p.m. that day). #COVID19 #covid

19/ I received a ton of emails while I was on the ventilator.

Unlike some patients, I really wasn’t given any time to prepare before I was inubated. Had I been given a little time, I could have written a pretty amazing out-of-office auto reply....