The front lines during the coronavirus pandemic look very different than most every war ever fought, but they still hold grave danger for the brave warriors fighting to save their people.
One of those combatants is Drew Nagy, a 44-year-old Columbia Academy graduate, a member of Columbia’s Woodlawn Church and a survivor of COVID-19.
As an ICU nurse at a Louisiana hospital, Nagy was treating several coronavirus patients. Then on March 24 he began having allergy-like symptoms with a stuffy head, itchy eyes and a low-grade fever hovering around 99 degrees.
After a few days, he started to lose his sense of smell and taste and developed a severe cough. With his symptoms worsening steadily, he underwent a coronavirus test, which is very similar to a flu test with a deep nasal swab. It came back positive.
Nagy had to isolate himself in his Hattiesburg home from his family, including his wife of five years, Amber, and daughters Alana, 12, and Emma Kate, 3. The worst part about it for him was not being able to see his family other than through a screen door.
“That’s been one of the hardest things to not be able to hug my mom and tell her that I love her and that I’m going to be OK,” he said.
He counts himself lucky that he didn’t develop shortness of breath, a common side effect in severe cases, but for him the body aches and the loss of taste and smell were his least favorite.
“I knew my taste was off, but at first I just thought it was my allergies and with my head stuffed I just couldn’t taste what I was eating. Then I realized one day I went to peel an orange, and I couldn’t smell it. That’s when I was like, 'Wait a minute.' I even squirted the oil and stuff on my fingers and tried to smell it and nothing.”
His cough was horrible as well and was the symptom that lasted the longest, extending past when everything else felt better. With his symptoms other than his cough disappearing by Friday, Nagy was scheduled to return to work Wednesday with a clean bill of health.
While working in the ICU, Nagy said he was worried and scared every day he went into work that he could potentially bring the coronavirus home to his family. He added, though, that when you work in health care you have to pray for God to protect you, and that if you do get sick He will bring you through it.
“Health care is a calling, and if God has called you to it you have to do what you have to do,” he said.
Following his diagnosis every day he woke up the first thought in his head was, “Is today going to be the day that I can’t breathe and I have to go to the hospital and be the one put on a ventilator?”
He stayed isolated from his family the first few days, but he was thankful when the symptoms subsided that he was able to see and spend time with them.
On Friday he said it was still pretty tough not being able to see the rest of his family. But knowing the time was quickly arriving where he could interact with them lifted a weight off his shoulders.
Nagy’s treatment advice is threefold and simple: Stay quarantined, wash your hands and drink lots of fluids. For his own home remedy, he opted for hot tea, lozenges and healthy foods, even though he couldn’t taste it, along with taking Vitamin C, a known immune booster.
“They’re not really giving anybody treatments unless they have what they call "comorbidities" and other diseases like diabetes or other respiratory issues," he explained. "If they start developing shortness of breath and having trouble with their oxygen, at that point they start them on treatments. Right now it’s like any other virus: managing the symptoms as they come up.”
The main thing for a coronavirus patient is to stay away from others, according to Nagy. Even after 20 years as a nurse, he wasn’t able to realize he had it because his symptoms didn’t match what everybody had said to look for.
Since he tested positive, he began talking with others who have had it and realized a lot of them started with symptoms that presented as another illness before developing into the common COVID-19 symptoms.
“That’s why it’s so important to just stay home. Send one person to the store to get the stuff that you need and stay put,” he said.
Nagy added the only reason people need to be going out in public at all during this time is for an emergency, especially because there are a lot of services available now that will deliver food and groceries.
“Don’t go crazy running to the stores. Stay at home with your family and use this time to reflect on the things that God has done for you,” the veteran nurse said.
During his time in quarantine, Nagy and his family have been watching series on Netflix and online content from Woodlawn.
He said his church has been fantastic throughout the pandemic, offering support and pulling everyone together without having to be in the same building. It has been posting its services on both YouTube and Facebook.
The only time an ill person should go to the hospital or to a doctor’s office is if they start becoming short of breath or have an uncontrollable cough, Nagy said. With more places offering curbside testing, he advised to limit your exposure as much as possible.
“That’s the only way we’re going to stop the spread of this mess because there’s people walking around that have it that have no idea they have it,” he reasoned. “By the time their symptoms come around, how many thousands have they already infected because of the 10 people they came in contact with have already had contact with hundreds of people? We don’t realize how quickly this thing can spread.”
