‘I had to learn how to get the muscles working in my fingers’
COVID-19 patient also survived 9/11 and cancer
Chris Ward was diagnosed with COVID-19 the day before Thanksgiving. He had a headache, a rarity for him, and got a rapid test to rule out the virus before the holiday.
By the day after Thanksgiving, his heart was racing and he spiked a fever, so he went to the hospital.
He didn’t leave until February. Christmas morning, New Year’s Eve, his three sons’ hockey and lacrosse games, celebrating his 49th birthday with his wife, Kate — he missed it all.
“There were a lot of days where I really thought I was going to die,” Ward said. “But I guess I’ve got more to do on this earth, because every morning I woke up staring at those same walls.”
After Ward was admitted to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, his fever hovered around 104.5 for two weeks. His oxygen levels dropped so low he had to be moved to the intensive care unit and placed on a ventilator for five days. He stayed in the ICU on oxygen for more than a month before moving back to the general COVID-19 unit and eventually, in early February, to the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, where he had to relearn how to sit up, stand, walk — even talk.
“When he arrived, he had difficulty even moving in his bed,” said Kathleen Webler, Ward’s speech-language pathologist at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. “He needed a lot of help not just from a strength perspective, but even the coordination of breathing and activity was difficult. Talking was difficult. The way he would describe it to us is he felt like he had just sprinted a mile and he just couldn’t catch his breath.”
Prepandemic, Ward ran marathons.
He played on Lake Forest College’s hockey and lacrosse teams and was coaching his sons’ hockey teams before he got COVID-19.
“When I got to Shirley Ryan I was 130 pounds with zero muscle on my body,” he said. “I lost 65 pounds. I couldn’t sit up. I had to learn how to get the muscles working in my fingers.”
“We just looked at it one day at a time,” Kate Ward said. “And we’re still doing that.”
COVID-19 wasn’t Ward’s first major health challenge. Two decades ago — before he moved to Chicago, before he met Kate — Ward worked for AIG, a finance and insurance company. He commuted from Hoboken, New Jersey, to Manhattan five days a week, either by ferry or subway.
On Sept. 11, 2001, he took the subway.
His train pulled into the station underneath the World Trade Center around the same time the first plane struck the north tower.
“It was pandemonium,” he said. “It was pitch black and there was so much debris and you’re kind of choking to death on it. I remember saying an Our Father and ‘make this quick’ because, you know, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even open my eyes.”
He said he remembers people smashing the windows in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York offices for commuters to climb through to escape the smoke and debris. He said he remembers running as fast as he could away from the towers. He said he remembers watching the towers crumble.
“But by the grace of God I survived,” he said.
About seven years ago, Ward was having severe, unexplained bowel obstructions. He was living in Chicago by then, having transferred to an AIG office here in 2004. After four debilitating bouts in three years, a doctor at Northwestern performed a procedure that revealed cancerous nodules covering Ward’s intestines.
He had non-Hodgkin’s follicular lymphoma.
“As soon as you get the diagnosis you start Googling,” Kate Ward said. “With his specific diagnosis, one of the first things that popped up was 9/11.”
Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in first responders and Manhattan residents and workers has been linked to the toxins that filled the air on Sept. 11 and the weeks and months after.
“I was underground inhaling all that dust and debris and particles,” Ward said. “Two or three weeks later I was walking down there every day, working there for the next few years.”
His oncologist likened his exposure to being poisoned.
After chemotherapy treatments, Ward’s cancer has been in remission for more than a year. He takes a maintenance drug and gets scanned every few months, but COVID-19 has disrupted that process.
He is, four months later, still testing positive for COVID-19.
“It’s unclear whether he is truly, actively infectious or just still shedding low levels of the virus,” said Dr. Mark Huang, Ward’s lead physician at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. “We’ve seen cases where people will test positive for months down the road.”
This has been particularly true for cancer patients who contract COVID-19, since compromised immune systems can harbor viruses for longer.
Huang said it’s not clear whether Ward’s cancer history contributed to his severe reaction to the coronavirus.
“It could have made things worse for him from a lung standpoint, certainly,” Huang said. “It could have contributed to his prolonged recovery course.”
But Huang has treated dozens of patients whose bodies suffered similar COVID-19 trauma.
“Sadly, this is one of those cases we see kind of typically,” he said. “This is what most of the public is not even aware of. They’re forgetting about all these people who can have dramatic and severe manifestations from COVID that last long after the infection. It’s kind of dichotomized into either you get better or you’re a statistic on the COVID death page. But there’s a big spectrum in between, and I think people forget about that.”
Ward was released from Shirley Ryan AbilityLab on March 16. He’s able to walk unassisted now and he’s regaining strength in his limbs and extremities. He continues intensive therapy at home in Glen Ellyn, where he’s isolated from Kate and their sons, Quinn, 11, Cooper, 9, and Duncan, 6 , until he tests negative for COVID-19.
The Wards’ neighbors rallied while he was in the hospital and rehab — dropping off meals for Kate and the boys, Christmas caroling at their front door, adding Chris to their prayer chains.
“We were very blessed,” Kate Ward said. “And I know he’s going to keep recovering. I think the isolation had to be as bad as the physical war he was waging. Even being able to do a modified hug is good medicine.”
Webler said it was particularly gratifying to help Ward regain his voice.
“We had to build up his trust,” she said. “We ended up talking a lot about his life and he told me about his experiences and how surviving 9/11 and having been an athlete kept him motivated. He wants to get back to doing the things he used to do with his children. That was his motivation every single day.”
“Those were the hardest weeks of my life,” Chris Ward said of rehab. “It was a lot of tough love. They said, ‘Look, we know when to push and we know when to stop.’ And it didn’t always line up with what I wanted. I wanted to lay back in the bed and they were like, ‘No. We’re getting you back out of the bed.’ And they were right. I just can’t say thank you enough to them.”
Webler said Ward inspired them.
“The journey of life he’s been on and the things he’s endured and recovered from make him an incredibly special person,” Webler said. “He’s so inspiring to us as a staff. No matter how difficult it was, he always did what we asked of him. If he was frustrated, if he was disappointed and missing his family, he always got out of bed and did the therapies. I just really want to celebrate him as a patient because his story is so unique — the COVID is not necessarily unique, but the journey he has been on is incredible.”
It’s also a poignant reminder of the toll this virus can take, and the strength that so many of its victims have to summon just to survive.
We’re walking around this world with all sorts of people whose stories we don’t know, whose lives have been marked by trauma and love and loss and survival. We owe each other the courtesy of care, the acknowledgment of connectedness: My behavior affects your health. Our fates are bound. And recognizing that fully is both lovely and harrowing.
“This is what most of the public is not even aware of. They’re forgetting about all these people who can have dramatic and severe manifestations from COVID that last long after the infection. It’s kind of dichotomized into either you get better or you’re a statistic on the COVID death page. But there’s a big spectrum in between, and I think people forget about that.” — Dr. Mark Huang, Ward’s lead physician at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab