As the COVID-19 situation worsened, my eldest daughter, a college student, was most worried about her father, who works at a hospital. My husband is a Korean medicine doctor who works in the physical therapy department at Broadway Hospital in Manhattan, treating about 30 to 40 patients every day. He commutes about two and a half hours each way from our home in Fort Lee to the hospital in Manhattan and exercises regularly, so he generally takes good care of his health. But something we thought we could avoid ended up happening to us.
Friday, March 27, 2020Day
I received a call from the hospital where my husband works. They told me that a patient had tested positive for COVID-19 and that my husband needed to get tested. From that moment on, my husband began self-isolating at home, using the master bedroom—which has an en suite bathroom—all by himself. The test results confirmed that my husband had COVID-19. I was extremely worried because my 86-year-old mother-in-law and my youngest daughter, a middle school student, live with us. My eldest daughter, a college student, couldn’t come home because she was in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for ROTC training. My husband, who was in isolation, had no fever, didn’t have a cough, and was eating well. I searched the internet and prepared plenty of foods said to boost immunity, such as curry, lotus root, onions, glutinous rice porridge, yam, celery, taro, squash, and watercress soup. Whenever I entered my husband’s room, I wore a raincoat, a hat, a mask, sunglasses, and gloves. The 27th, 28th, and 29th passed without incident.
Monday, March 30, 2020Day
My husband, who hadn’t had a fever until then, developed a fever and said it felt like his heart was being cut out with a knife. I called a nurse I know well at Englewood Hospital to see if we could go there, but she told me there were so many COVID-19 patients in the ER that it might actually make things worse if we went there. While I was hesitating, my husband’s symptoms worsened, so I called an ambulance myself. The 911 responders put an oxygen mask on my husband, loaded him onto a stretcher, and took him to the emergency room. However, at 5 a.m. the next day, the 31st, they sent him home with only fever-reducing medication, saying there wasn’t enough space in the emergency room. They simply prescribed antibiotics, saying he had inflammation in his lungs.
Thursday, April 2, 2020Day
She hadn’t been coughing much and had been eating well, but that day, after having glutinous rice porridge and taro soup, a text came from the master bedroom saying she had a fever and was vomiting. When I called the hospital’s emergency room, they told us not to come because there were too many patients. My husband decided to wait and see how she’d do.
Friday, April 3, 2020Day
I went into my husband’s room to air it out after bringing him breakfast, but his face looked dark and strange. He said he felt like he was going to die and asked me to call 911 for an ambulance. He said it felt like a knife was constantly cutting through his heart. I called 911, and we went back to the Inglewood ER, but they wouldn’t let our family come with us. When my husband was wheeled into the ER for the second time, I was so scared and distressed that I might lose him. Our whole family was in tears.
After my husband went to the emergency room at 7 a.m., I disinfected everything in his room with alcohol and boiled all the bedding before washing it. But my husband had left his cell phone behind. I called a nurse I knew at Englewood Hospital to ask for help, but she told me that not only she, but all the nurses she knew had been infected with COVID-19 and were in quarantine at home. With her help, I was finally able to get the cell phone to my husband through another nurse.
Saturday, April 4, 2020Sunday through Tuesday, April 7
We live on the 14th floor of an apartment building. Whenever we went out, we wore something like a spacesuit, along with sunglasses, a mask, and gloves, and carried a disinfectant that was said to kill 99% of viruses, spraying it on everything we touched. When we returned home, we washed and disinfected everything—not just our clothes, but even our shoes. We disinfected everything every day. Thankfully, my husband’s attending physician called every day at 6:00 p.m. to give us a detailed update on his condition. My husband told me later that a patient in the same room had his oxygen mask slip off, but the medical staff were too busy to attend to him, so he put it back on for him. He said the hospital was like a battlefield and the fear was overwhelming.
The family prayed fervently, and his mother, in particular, prayed for her son for five to six hours a day while weeping.
Wednesday, April 8, 2020Day
The attending physician said my husband’s fever had gone down and his cough had improved, so he could be discharged. However, since confirmed COVID-19 patients aren’t allowed to take taxis when they’re discharged, a family member has to pick them up. Because I was worried about my mother-in-law and my child, I had him come home late that evening by ambulance. When my husband was discharged and came home, the rest of the family was all in their rooms for fear of getting infected, so they didn’t even see his face.
Before my husband came home, I set up a herbal tea pot in the master bedroom with bellflower root, ginger, and burdock root to brew, and I also prepared drinking water, coffee, and snacks. My mother-in-law suggested that since the rest of the family needed to be careful too, we should set the table and leave it outside the master bedroom door so my husband could bring it inside to eat. I searched online for foods said to be good for the lungs—such as strawberries, kiwis, lotus root, seaweed soup, and bellflower root—and used them to prepare all three meals. I also boiled and disinfected all the dishes my husband had used.
Monday, May 11, 2020Day
Although the doctor said he could return home and live with his family a week after being discharged, my husband insisted on remaining in isolation until he had a blood test to confirm the presence of antibodies. On May 11, the blood test results finally came back, and my husband was able to see his family again. He had spent nearly two months alone in his room. It must have been very lonely and difficult for him. Thanks to his efforts, no one else in the family contracted COVID-19.
During our 28 years in the U.S., my husband and I were both extremely busy with our jobs. Although our goal was to raise our children well, we were each so caught up in our own lives that we had no time to look out for one another. This ordeal was truly a nightmare, but it was also a precious time that made me keenly realize the importance of family. I felt endlessly sorry, thinking only of all the things I hadn’t done for my husband, and I repented and prayed. My husband, who is from Gyeongsang Province and has always been awkward at expressing himself and rather reserved, went through this ordeal and told me he was grateful and that he loved me.
The hardest part was the judgmental stares from those around us directed at the families of confirmed cases. Even though my husband had been infected unavoidably while treating patients, the families of confirmed cases were treated as if they were guilty when they weren’t. And the well-wishing calls made out of mere curiosity were also very difficult to handle. I just wish they had simply prayed for us…
The counseling hotline at the Christian Medical Mutual Aid Association was truly comforting. I called to inquire about medical expenses, and the staff member kindly explained that COVID-19 is covered under the program using the same criteria as other illnesses, which put my mind at ease. In particular, their offer to pray with me was a great source of comfort.
The battle against COVID-19 is not over yet. A nurse I know, who had to self-isolate and recover at home after testing positive, had a really hard time due to a severe cough, but she returned to work at the hospital as soon as she recovered. The medical staff caring for patients on the front lines are the heroes of this battle. I am truly grateful to them. And I want to say that patients like my husband—who overcame the virus while isolated alone, feeling lonely and struggling—are all heroes as well.