Waterford – MaryLou Gannotti, who is slowly emerging from an attack on COVID-19, wants people to know that the disease can lead you into a trap without warning, even if you are an image of health.
If ever there was a healthy family, the Gannottis would be it. MaryLou described herself, husband, Greg (56), and her two sons, Jake (19), and Luke (14) as a family of fitness enthusiasts who participate in – and in the case of Greg, coach – wrestling and enjoy outdoor activities, paddleboarding included.
But by the end of December 2020, all four had come down with COVID-19.
MaryLou also wants people to know ‘that it takes a meeting that can take one second, 30 minutes, an hour, but if you think you’re safe with that very good friend, it’s quite possible.
How it happened
The Gannottis suspect they contracted COVID-19 from a friend of Greg’s because they spent some time together. MaryLou said her son started clearing his throat almost immediately after Christmas, although he did not have a cough. It seems a bit strange, but she does not think much about it.
Then, on December 28, MaryLou got up to work at Coastal Connecticut Research, a medical clinic in New London. She said she got tired when she woke up, but attributed the feeling to the fact that she was the mother of the family and ended the holiday recently. ‘I’m the one who cooks, cleans, does shopping. That’s why I said, ‘You know what, I’m just wiped out.’ I thought I might have had the blues because I could not see my mom or other family members during Christmas. ”
While she was at work that Monday, Mary Lou received a text from Greg.
‘He revealed to me that his friend’s friend tested positive for COVID-19. He said, ‘We’re all going to be tested,’ and I thought to myself, ‘Don’t tell me the frog in my child’s throat is FILLED,’ “MaryLou said.
She tells her boss, who sent her home and closed the facility for three days. All her colleagues tested negative. Greg and Luke found out they tested positive Wednesday of that week; MaryLou and Jake, on Thursday. None of them really thought they were sick until they got the positive results.
MaryLou cherishes a degree of disbelief; her family was healthy and followed every protocol. This is a family of fighters, and it will go well with them, she decided. She was encouraged when the symptoms during the first few days after positive testing were not overwhelming.
‘At first I thought to myself, I can get through this, it’s like your basic cold. “Now guess what, I was wrong,” she said. “Within days, my lungs were so compromised. We took our (temperatures) every day, none of us ever had anything above 98.6 (degrees), but eventually I got chills, I had body aches, I had headaches. The biggest struggle for me was my breathing: I felt like there was a rock on my chest. And I felt like someone had a rope around my lungs, and they kept pulling the rope tight. ‘
Her sons and husband were not so ill. She lost her taste and smell; they have not. Jake had the softest case. Luke has an anxious feeling in his chest, but as MaryLou said, he’s 14 and she’s 50, ‘so he’s more resilient than I am.’ Greg sounded like a wet cough, while MaryLou had trouble coughing at all – ‘It was just pain. And density. ”
According to her own admission, she should have gone to the hospital to utilize the supplemental breathing, as a nurse from her doctor’s office told her.
‘My concern as a mother and wife is: what happens when I leave my family? “I almost felt like I would not come back,” she said. I am a lifelong Catholic. They say the voice in your head is sometimes the voice of God, and the voice said to me, ‘Stay at home. You’re going to make it. ‘I did not know I needed supplemental oxygen, but by the grace of God I was able to do it. ”
While MaryLou said she had some issues, she and the rest of her family were cleaned around January 7-9.
‘I’ve had the flu before, bronchitis, I’ve had diseases that have suppressed me, but then I get up again. It’s not you; you stay in bed for three days and then get up again, ‘she said. ‘It’s you, stay in bed for nine days, start getting up again, and then you fall back on your emperor. I do not exercise as much as before, I try to rebuild my lungs, I walked again with my dog who started tearing the house apart. I think it recovers well, but it certainly did not make the virus easier. It still divides and conquers. ”
COVID cocktail
The Gannottis tried a number of remedies while recovering with varying degrees of success. MaryLou went to Facebook to say she was short of breath and asked how to alleviate it. A friend of hers, who is an occupational therapist and has worked with COVID-19 patients, told her to go on her stomach. Another friend said he should practice yoga breathing.
MaryLou continued her own research on YouTube, where she found a doctor on the BBC who describes a breathing technique and also advises spending time on your stomach.
‘My friend said he spends at least two hours a day on your stomach. “Do not sleep on your back, do not lie on your back,” said Mary Lou. ‘I had everyone in this house do’ belly time ‘. At that point, I almost felt like I could just sleep. I slept up to 12-15 hours a day. I had no energy, but I knew the only way to get through this was to sleep and shut off the outside world. I did not want anyone to share grim statistics with me. ”
Another friend of MaryLou, who is a nurse, told her that she should start taking a certain amount of baby aspirin every day because people are more prone to blood clots with COVID-19. MaryLou has finally started a regimen, which she calls ‘the COVID cocktail’, of vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc and vitamin B12. A naturopath told her to take black cumin oil as well.
“While it was happening, I just wanted to survive. I knew I could live or die. “I knew the statistics with this disease, and I also knew I wanted to live,” she said. “I’m not saying that people who died did not have the will to live, but I knew I wanted to get out of this.”
Patrick Cahill, a physician at Backus Hospital, described how devastating COVID-19 can be for a family living all under one roof.
“By the time the first person knows they have it, they have mostly passed it on to the rest of the household,” he said. ‘The highest period of transmission is the two days before the onset of symptoms. By the time someone is symptomatic, people often try to talk themselves out of the reality that it is COVID. They will say it’s a cold, they can wait a few days, then they can be tested if it gets worse, and by that time everyone they live with is probably exposed. ‘
Cahill confirmed that the healthier someone is with dealing with the virus, the more likely it will be to recover quickly. He also said he understood MaryLou’s decision not to go to a hospital.
“It’s completely understandable and it’s not something anyone should ever blame themselves for, especially not if they’re usually in excellent health,” Cahill said. ‘The thing I want to tell people shortly after they are diagnosed, something that will probably be of great help, is to see if they can buy a pulse oximeter or borrow one from a friend to monitor their oxygen levels. ”
He also advised people to be vaccinated as soon as possible and to pay attention if they fall into a fitness group.
While people are looking for alternative methods to treat COVID-19, Cahill recommends that they consult with their doctors. And he said that self-pruning, or lying on your stomach, is one of the strategies “we tell everyone in the hospital to do, because it was a very easy and non-invasive, non-toxic method” to improve the outcomes. “
The kindness of others
While the time that was in there and struggling with her health was bad for MaryLou, she said the people who reached out to her were ‘angels’ and helped her significantly through the ordeal. The kindness of strangers even spared a birthday.
In addition to the whole family catching the coronavirus during the holiday season, it also happened to be cut on Luke’s birthday on January 2nd and MaryLou’s 50th on January 12th.
“January is already a rotten month for birthdays, but do you want to talk about the worst birthday month ever?” MaryLou said. “But we get out of it. I went to church this past Sunday, and a friend said to me, ‘It’s good to see you,’ and I said to her, ‘It’s good to see you.’ ‘
On Luke’s birthday, the family ordered groceries to be delivered to Walmart, including a cake. But the cake was not there. Greg contacted the delivery person, but Walmart did not want her to return the cake, so he picked one up for the family and put it outside their door.
‘My husband gave her a large fee to cover the costs. A stranger we did not know took money from her own pocket and delivered a birthday cake. It is such things, ‘MaryLou said in tears,’ that suffocate me because they say that Jesus imagines himself when people do such things. We did not even know this woman, but she knew our order had been tampered with, and she went to pick out a birthday cake for our children because we could not.
Hope and family
MaryLou mentions a striking piece of family history: her great-grandmother, Carmina DiBiasio, died in 1919 during another global pandemic of influenza in Italy.
“She was 32 years old when she died, leaving behind my grandfather Andrea, his brother Tommasso and sisters Concettina and Caterina,” she said. ‘My grandfather was about to turn 11 when she died, and he was the eldest of her four children. He emigrated to the USA at 16, and much of it had to do with his evil stepmother. ‘
The Gannottis is the ultimate warning story in MaryLou’s eyes. She said the coronavirus was insidious – it could infect anyone at any time.
But MaryLou said she wants to give people hope.
“There is hope in kindness, there is hope in compassion, the wonderful things people have prayed for us, sent messages, my brothers visited me, my sister, my mother, my aunt,” she said. “I prayed for our cousins. We appreciate the people who prayed for us. I do not want to sound Gospel, but it does make a difference. ‘