Waterford – MaryLou Gannotti, who is slowly emerging from a COVID-19 outbreak, wants people to know that the disease can ambush you without warning, even if you are the image of health.
If there ever was a healthy family, it would be the Gannottis. MaryLou described herself, husband Greg, 56, and their two children, Jake, 19, and Luke, 14, as “a family of fitness enthusiasts” who participate – and in the case of Greg, trainer – in wrestling and outdoor activities, including paddleboarding.
However, at the end of December 2020, all four received COVID-19.
MaryLou also wants people to know “that it takes a date that can last a second, 30 minutes, an hour, but if you think you’re safe with that great friend, you might as well not be.”
How did this happen
The Gannottis suspect that they contracted COVID-19 from a friend of Greg, as they spent time together. MaryLou said her son started clearing his throat almost immediately after Christmas, although he did not have a cough. It seemed a little strange, but she didn’t think about it much.
Then, on December 28, MaryLou got up to work at Coastal Connecticut Research, a medical clinic in New London. She said she felt tired when she woke up, but attributed this feeling to being the mother of the family and having recently ended her vacation. “I cook, clean, shop. So I said, ‘You know what, I’m just exhausted.’ I thought that maybe I was sad because I couldn’t see my mother or other relatives during Christmas. “
While working that Monday, MaryLou received a message from Greg.
“He revealed to me that his friend’s wife tested positive for COVID-19. He said, ‘We’re all going to get tested,’ and I thought to myself, ‘Don’t tell me that frog in my son’s throat is COVID,’ said MaryLou.
She then told her boss, who sent her home and closed the facility for three days. All his colleagues were negative. Greg and Luke found that they had tested positive on the Wednesday of that week; MaryLou and Jake, on Thursday. None of them really thought they were sick until they received the positive results.
MaryLou harbored some disbelief; his family was healthy and had followed all protocols. This is a family of fighters and they would be fine, she decided. She was encouraged when, during the first few days after the positive test, the symptoms were not unbearable.
“At first I thought to myself, I can navigate through this, it’s like your basic cold. Well, guess what, I was wrong, ”she said. “In a few days, my lungs were very compromised. We take our (temperatures) every day, none of us ever had anything above 98.6 (degrees), but I ended up getting chills, I had some body aches, I had a headache. The biggest difficulty for me was my breathing: I felt like there was a stone in my chest. And I felt like someone had a rope around my lungs, and they kept on tightening the rope. “
Her children and husband were not so sick. She lost the taste and the smell; they didn’t. Jake had the mildest case. Luke felt a tightness in his chest, but, as MaryLou said, he is 14 and 50, “so he is tougher than me”. Greg had what appeared to be a wet cough, while MaryLou had trouble producing a cough – “It was just pain. And tension. “
As she herself admitted, she should have gone to the hospital to take advantage of the extra breath, as she was told after the ordeal by a nurse at her doctor’s office.
“My concern as a mother and wife is: what happens if I leave my family? I almost felt that if I went, I wouldn’t be back, “she said.” I am a lifelong Catholic. They say that the voice in your head is sometimes the voice of God, and the voice said to me, ‘Stay home. You will get it. ‘I didn’t know I needed supplemental oxygen, but by the grace of God I managed to survive. “
Although MaryLou said she has some persistent problems, she and the rest of her family were cleared between 7 and 9 January.
“I’ve had flu before, bronchitis before, I’ve had diseases that knocked me down, but then I’ll be back. This is not yours, you stay in bed for three days and then get up, ”she said. “This is yours, stay in bed for nine days, start to get up, and then you go back to your keester. I am not exercising as much as before, I am trying to recover my lungs, I went for a walk with my dog, which was starting to destroy the house. I think getting into it in good health helps with recovery, but it certainly didn’t facilitate the virus. He still divides and conquers. “
COVID cocktail
The Gannottis tried a litany of medicines while recovering, with varying degrees of success. MaryLou went to Facebook to say she was short of breath and asked how to mitigate that. A friend of hers, who is an occupational therapist and has worked with patients at COVID-19, told her to lie on her stomach. Another friend said to practice yoga breathing.
MaryLou continued her own search on YouTube, where she found a doctor featured on the BBC describing a breathing technique and also advising you to lie on your stomach.
“My friend said to spend at least two hours a day on your stomach. Don’t sleep on your back, don’t lie on your back, ”said MaryLou. “I made everyone in this house do ‘belly time’. At that point, I almost felt that all I could do was sleep. I slept 12-15 hours a day. I had no energy, but I knew that the only way to get over it was to sleep and isolate myself from the outside world. I didn’t want anyone to share gloomy statistics with me. “
Another friend of MaryLou, who is a nurse, said that she needed to start taking a certain amount of baby aspirin every day because people are more prone to blood clots with COVID-19. MaryLou finally started a regimen, which she calls the “COVID cocktail”, of vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc and vitamin B12. A naturopath told her to start taking black cumin oil as well.
“While this was happening, I just wanted to survive. I knew I could live or die. I knew the statistics of this disease, I also knew that I wanted to live ”, she said. “I’m not saying that the people who died didn’t want to live, but I knew I wanted to get out of this.”
Patrick Cahill, a doctor at Backus Hospital, described how devastating COVID-19 can be for a family living under one roof.
“Most of the time, when the first person knows she has it, she has already passed it on to the rest of the house,” he said. “The greatest period of risk of transmission is two days or more before the onset of symptoms. When someone becomes symptomatic, people are often trying to convince themselves of the reality that it is COVID. They’ll say it’s a cold, they can wait a few days, then they can get tested when things are getting worse and by now, everyone they live with has probably already been exposed.
Cahill confirmed that the healthier the person is when dealing with the virus, the greater the likelihood of a quick recovery. He also said he understood MaryLou’s decision not to go to a hospital.
“It is completely understandable and it is not something to be blamed for, especially if you are in excellent health,” said Cahill. “What I try to tell people right after they are diagnosed, which would probably be very helpful, is to see if they can buy a pulse oximeter or borrow from a friend just to monitor their oxygen levels. “
He also advised people to be vaccinated as soon as possible and to pay attention if they fit into an eligibility group.
As people look for alternative methods to treat COVID-19, Cahill recommends that they consult their doctors. And he said that self-pronouncing, or lying on your stomach, is one of the strategies “we tell everyone in the hospital to do it because this is a very easy, non-invasive and non-toxic method of improving results”.
The kindness of others
Although the time she spent indoors and struggling with her health was unpleasant for MaryLou, she said that the people who came to her were “angels” and helped her significantly during the ordeal. The kindness of strangers even saved a birthday.
In addition to the whole family catching the coronavirus during the holiday season, Luke’s birthday on January 2 happened. And MaryLou’s 50th birthday on January 12th.
“January is already a bad month for birthdays, but do you want to talk about the worst birthday month ever?” MaryLou said. “But we are getting out of this. I went to church last Sunday and a friend said to me, ‘It’s good to see you’, and I said to her, ‘It’s good to be seen’ ”.
On Luke’s birthday, the family asked for groceries to be delivered to Walmart, including a cake. But the cake was not there. Greg contacted the delivery man, but Walmart wouldn’t let her bring the cake back, so she took one for the family and put it outside the door.
“My husband gave her a big tip to cover the costs. A stranger we didn’t know took money out of her own pocket and delivered a birthday cake. These are things, ”said MaryLou through tears,“ that suffocate me because they say that Jesus presents himself when people do things like that. We didn’t even know this woman, but she knew that our order was spoiled, and she went and chose a birthday cake for our children because we couldn’t. “
Hope and family
MaryLou mentioned a remarkable piece of family history: her great-grandmother, Carmina DiBiasio, died of influenza in Italy in 1919, during another global pandemic.
“She was 32 when she died, leaving my grandfather Andrea, his brother Tommasso and sisters Concettina and Caterina behind,” she said. “My grandfather was about to turn 11 when she died and was the eldest of his four children. He immigrated to the United States at the age of 16, and much of that had to do with his evil stepmother. “
Gannottis are the last cautionary tale in MaryLou’s eyes. She said the coronavirus is insidious – it can get hold of anyone at any time.
Still, MaryLou said she wants to give people hope.
“There is hope in kindness, there is hope in compassion, the wonderful things that people were praying for us, sending us messages, my brothers checking with me, my sister, my mother, my aunt,” she said. “I had cousins praying for us. We thank the people who prayed for us. I don’t want to look evangelical, but it makes a difference ”