San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Texmaniacs singer Max Baca discusses the fight of his life
In early November, musician Max Baca wasn't feeling well. He'd developed a nagging cough and noticed he couldn't smell his food. But his band, Los Texmaniacs, kept gigging.
Baca, who plays bajo sexto and sings in the Grammy-winning Tex-Mex band, told himself it was a recurrence of sinusitis, a chronic issue for him. He wore a mask onstage and when streaming shows on Facebook from his home studio with his nephew, accordionist Josh Baca — except for when he was singing.
Band members, all wearing masks, traveled in the same car together out of state.
A few days later, with his symptoms persisting, Baca tested positive for COVID-19 after going to Lafayette, La., for the Blackpot Festival & Cookoff, which was livestreamed on YouTube without an audience in attendance.
“I thought I was being careful,” said Baca, 53, who is recovering at home following an 11-day stay in the hospital.
He doesn't know exactly when he was infected or whether anyone who was exposed to him while he was sick became infected. The other members of the band tested negative for COVID-19.
Baca now acknowledges that he wasn't as careful with social distancing and masking as he could have been. And that he'd put himself and others at risk.
His family physician, Dr. David Lopez, prescribed the controversial drug hydroxychloroquine and an antibiotic in an effort to keep Baca out of the hospital.
But his health continued to deteriorate.
Baca didn't realize that his blood oxygen level had dropped to dangerous levels, or that he had developed pneumonia. He just knew he was in trouble and nearing collapse.
Lopez could hear it in his voice over the telephone when Baca called him again, the labored breathing, the anxiety. He advised him to get to a hospital.
“I wanted to be aggressive,” said Lopez, noting that Baca's
weight and ethnicity, and the fact that he is living with diabetes, put him in the high-risk category. “He was behind the eight ball.”
He was treated in the COVID unit at Northeast Baptist Hospital. It wasn’t a given that he would make it. By the time he was hospitalized, he could only get a few words out between gasps. Deep breaths were excruciating.
“It could have gone either way,” Lopez said.
“I was freaking out,” Baca said. “I was fighting for my life.”
Inside the COVID unit — an area often referred to as COVID Island — Baca was completely isolated. He could hear the mechanical sounds of ventilators in other rooms.
When the sounds stopped, he came to learn, it meant someone had died. He said he saw bodies rolled through the corridor on gurneys. That’s when fear often took over, and Baca remembers feeling guilty about making a joke about the artificial breathing next door “sounding like Darth Vader.”
Time stopped inside the icy cold room, he said, and there are three or four days that he can’t recall. He does recall the quiet mantra he would repeat: “No me va ganar” (“It’s not going to beat me”).
Baca received regular breathing treatments, steroid injections and convalescent plasma therapy. Fortunately for him, he was never intubated and placed on a ventilator.
Since being discharged from the hospital, Baca has been mostly quarantining at home. His wife Ping Xu also contracted COVID-19, but she was not hospitalized.
The ordeal was doubly scary for her. She just wanted her husband back home.
“Oh, my God. I was so scared,” she said. “I thought, ‘I can’t go to the hospital.’ ”
Still recovering, the couple wears masks at home and are social distancing out of an abundance of caution. Both are urging friends to take COVID-19 seriously and to “wear your mask, wash your hands, social distance.”
A few days after he was released from the hospital, Baca was onstage playing at a private party out of town that Los TexManiacs had committed to months ago. He was masked the whole time — he still doesn’t have the breath to sing.
Baca said he played the gig so soon after leaving the hospital, while he was still weak, because he didn’t think he had a choice. He knows the decision will sound shocking to some.
“I was trying to make ends meet,” he said. “I’m afraid I’m going to lose my home if I don’t work.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control, people with moderate COVID-19 are no longer infectious 10 days after the onset of symptoms; people with severe illness might need to remain isolated for up to 20 days after the onset of symptoms.
He hasn’t performed since then, though Los Texmaniacs have shows planned for later this month.
“I have to be ready by the 18th and 19th,” he said. “We’re playing Fredericksburg at the Hill Top Cafe. I have to pay my mortgage and bills.”
Like many musicians, Baca has no medical insurance, and he is looking at a mountain of medical bills for the hospital stay. Ironically, Los Texmaniacs took part in a benefit, “A Night for Austin,” in the summer that raised money for nonprofits including MusiCares, which assists musicians in times of need.
Baca says he resists being consumed by desperation and negative thoughts. He starts most of his days at a walking trail near his home, a quiet area with a Little League baseball field and a playground.
“I’m trying to get my strength back,” he said. “I’m weak in my chest and lungs. I can’t sing yet. I can go up the stairs, but I can’t sing.”
Baca is one of several renowned musicians hit by COVID-19. Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel lost 35 pounds while recovering last spring. Christopher Cross developed GuillainBarré Syndrome, a rare nervous system disorder, after contracting COVID-19. Jazz musician Ron Wilkins survived after being on a ventilator for more than a month. Singer-songwriter John Prine and Fountains of Wayne member Adam Schlesinger both died from the disease.
Even now, the thought of being on a ventilator can make Baca anxious. “I couldn’t breathe and I’m claustrophobic,” he said.
His doctor has warned him that “COVID can come back.”
He worries about that — and his fragile mortality. “I don’t like to think about it,” he said.
In the hospital, his panic attacks were kept under control with medication. Baca said he got through the ordeal with prayer (he made a promise to himself to record a gospel album in thanks) and well wishes from friends like Los Lobos, Little Joe Hernandez, Kevin Fowler and Flaco Jimenez, as well as fans of Los Texmaniacs.
One phone call, from drummer Ringo Garza of Los Lonely Boys, was particularly emotional. During the call Garza blurted, “Don’t die, brother.”
There are some musicians who still think COVID-19 is a hoax, Baca said, even as the disease spikes across the country. He has a message for them: “It’s real, bro.”