Greg and Leslie Wei were prepping their Thanksgiving meal for two when Leslie said she didn’t feel well and went to lie down.
Greg felt increasingly lousy, too, and three days later he was struggling to breathe. The emergency room sent him home with an inhaler to help with his breathing and a pulse oximeter to measure the level of oxygen in his blood.
By Tuesday, Dec. 1, his COVID-19 diagnosis confirmed, Greg was back in the ER, but was still not sick enough to admit.
On the third trip, a day later, he was sick enough.
His blood oxygen level had sunk into the 70s; below 95 is considered concerning. Other tests indicated his organs were failing. He remembers hearing a doctor say, “I’m giving him a shot of dexamethasone.”
Then, he blacked out.
He remembers nothing more until Jan. 12, five-and-a-half weeks later.
Greg and Leslie Wei
Greg and Leslie Wei
Provided
Greg, of San Leandro, California, south of Berkeley, thinks he contracted COVID-19 at a friend’s house where he stayed for a night on the way to Seattle to help out his younger sister for a few days. He spent another night on the way back.
He tested negative for the virus the day after his return from Seattle, on the Monday before Thanksgiving, but the test he took the following Sunday was positive.
As sick as he was, and as close to death as Greg came over those five-and-a-half weeks, he feels incredibly lucky to have fallen ill when he did. If he had gotten sick during the first wave of…
