MIRACLE LI MOM-TO-BE
Bets it all on experimental Rx trial and beats COVID
Melanie McGurk was 27 weeks pregnant with her first child when she found herself in a Long Island hospital ICU fighting for her life against the coronavirus.
It was the nighttime that she dreaded the most.
“That’s when it really got bad,” the mom-to-be recalled. “It was like I was using every muscle in my body just to try and breathe.’’
McGurk, an occupational therapist for North Shore University Hospital, told The Post in an emotional interview about how she contracted COVID-19, her excruciating battle with it — and the drug trial she believes may have saved her and her unborn baby.
The 31-year-old Farmingdale woman said that at the beginning of March — when the number of New York infections was only in the double digits — she was pulling out all the stops to make sure she was safe from catching the virus.
She washed her hands until they were “raw” and let her husband, Brendan, do all of the shopping.
But she was still going to work, and by March 14, she started feeling chest palpitations, a sore throat and shortness of breath.
The next morning, she had a fever, so she called her obstetrician, who sent her straight to the Katz Women’s Hospital at Long Island Jewish Medical Center.
Two days later, McGurk’s chest X-rays showed she had pneumonia, and she received her coronavirus test back: She was positive.
“That day was definitely one of the worst days, just getting that news, because [before then], always in the back of my head, I’m like, you know, ‘Maybe it’s something else,’ ” McGurk said.
She recalled a tender moment with a nurse at the time who, despite risking catching the bug herself, knelt down and gave McGurk a hug.
McGurk was immediately brought to a COVID isolation unit and treated with hydroxychloroquine, but her condition worsened.
Suddenly, getting up and walking five feet to the bathroom left her breathless, and her Tylenol regimen was proving more and more powerless as her fever returned faster and more vicious each time.
McGurk was soon whisked to the ICU, where infectious-disease doctors started preparing her for the possibility of being put on a ventilator and having her deliver her baby three months early.
She was told that if that happened, her baby girl would also end up on a ventilator because she would be too young to breathe on her own.
That’s when McGurk was approached by doctors from the hospital’s Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, who told her about a controlled blind trial she was eligible to enroll in.
The trial involved Kevzara, an anti-inflammatory arthritis drug that is being eyed as possible treatment to ease the immune system’s damaging and often fatal overreaction to COVID-19.
McGurk wouldn’t know whether she would actually be getting the drug or just a saline solution, but as
a pregnant woman, it was the only trial she was eligible for.
She said one infectious-disease doctor told her, “You’re getting worse, your chest X-rays are getting worse, and this might be your best shot at getting better.’’
Her husband encouraged her to try it, she said. And after conferring with her obstetrician, who implored her to “strongly consider” it, McGurk sat for the hourlong IV infusion. Within 24 hours, she noticed her breathing had improved.
Two days later, McGurk was able to sit up and have a conversation without losing her breath and received the most “promising news” yet — her inflammation levels were down to 14 after peaking at 154, with the normal level being 4. On April 1, she was discharged. While McGurk is still reeling from the trauma she endured, she remains hopeful as her June 22 delivery date approaches.
Her doctors say the baby is fine, and McGurk — who still doesn’t know whether she actually received the drug — implored other mothers who might be in a similar situation to “trust your instincts” and don’t wait to get help.
“I think that made a difference — I got the care that I needed from the start,” she said. “I didn’t allow anything to get worse at home before following up.”