Healthcare Consumer Navigator Center is a Healthcare Consumer Advocate Organization that helps consumer navigate the healthcare maze. The following Series “KEEPING THE CONSUMER SAFE; LIVING WITH COVID”. Our goal is to provide a commonsense approach to living with covid with general healthcare information.
Covid Stories and General Information
The idea of COVID can become very easy to ignore if you are amongst the lucky to escape being touched by the virus. We believe somewhere along the COVID journey the country entered what we refer to as COVID Fatigue. Covid fatigue has been caused by massive amounts of social media coverage, the politicization of the virus, the deadly nature of the virus and the widespread impact the virus has had upon the American way of life. Debates have emerged over getting or not getting the vaccine. Conflicts have developed over whether school children should wear masks or not. According to polls, how people actually think about the virus depends upon their political party affiliation. Understanding the virus as a medical condition by the general citizenry has become very challenging. Very few Americans have ever been exposed to the challenges a pandemic poses. We aren’t accustomed to the killing force an unknown virus can cause and understand the apparent limited medical intervention has on preventing death.
The following two stories are vastly different experiences with COVID. The timing is very different as one occurs prior to vaccine access and the other post vaccination. One perspective is from a positive test and ultimate admission to the ICU of a hospital and a near death experience. The other perspective is from a positive test and asymptomatic experience. Both experiences have proven to be very impactful on understanding the many different dimensions the virus exposes.
For example, imagine being unknowingly exposed to the virus, unknowingly having the virus for approximately 6 days, being randomly tested and learning you’re positive?
On the other hand, imagine being tested and learning your positive. Contact your primary care physician via tele-health and being prescribed “Ivermectin.” Contact primary care physician two days later while experiencing no real improvement. Two days more and again contact primary care physician without any improvement. 3 more days head to hospital ER and immediately sent to COVID isolation unit. Oxygen level in the 70% range.
We are sharing our stories because we think with this knowledge peoples’ lives can be saved. We’re also sharing these stories to help eliminate some of the myths that seem to be rampant in social media. We also believe the public needs to know that not everyone in the medical community is up to speed on the diagnosis and treatment of COVID. GETTING TO THE RIGHT MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL AND THE RIGHT MEDICAL INSTITUTION COULD BE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH!
