TMS closes temporarily for cleaning
Museums board chief in ICU after contracting coronavirus
TEXARKANA — The Texarkana Museums System has closed its doors temporarily after the board president tested positive for COVID-19.
TMS Curator Jamie Simmons said TMS properties are closed through Friday for cleaning and they hope to reopen them Saturday. An announcement will be made Friday on the non-profit organization’s Facebook page.
“As of now, our scheduled events are still on, but participants have to wear masks and gloves,” Simmons said. “We will provide the latter.”
Velvet Cool, the board president who’s helped turn the TMS around to find better financial footing and more participation in recent years, talked freely about her illness. She’s currently in intensive care at CHRISTUS St. Michael Health System but feeling better, she said.
Cool’s unsure how she contracted the illness but has this recommendation: Wear a mask. Also, she wants anyone who’s been in contact with her to know she tested positive so they can get themselves tested.
Looking back, she first remembers that on a Saturday about a week-and-ahalf ago she went home after working hard at the museum for a couple days. She rested on her couch.
“We had been rearranging some rooms and going through some archives, and it was just really labor intensive,” Cool said. After that work, she started feeling sick on Sunday, which squashed plans to see her grandchildren, whom she hasn’t seen since March.
“Sunday, I woke up and I said, ‘You know, I just don’t feel good, so I’m not going to go see them,’” she said.
“I was exhausted. I didn’t want to do anything except sleep, and I would sleep, wake up, sleep, wake up. I just knew that something was wrong,” Cool added.
By the middle of the week, she went to a local clinic to get tested, receiving the positive test results a couple days later. By the time she went to the hospital, she’d only left the house that once. Her dad made her go to the emergency room.
“It turns out I have pneumonia and COVID,” Cool said. She anticipates being in I.C.U. a couple days before a regular room and possibly returning home over the weekend.
“I can’t say enough good things about the doctors and the nurses and everybody. Probably the hardest thing about this has been the emotional roller coaster,” Cool said. “Because I got up here on a Sunday, got checked in and then Monday morning I’m being told that I’m going to go on a ventilator.”
Worried thoughts raced through her mind: “I’m like, ‘I’m never going to see my grand kids again.’ I had no idea that I was that bad.”
Eventually, her caregivers at the hospital decided her breathing was better and a ventilator was unnecessary. With everyone on the same page, Cool said, “everything has run pretty smoothly.”
Cool said as far as the TMS is concerned they’ve been extremely lucky and blessed to receive COVID relief funds, including grants. She applied for them during the quarantine time. “It’s all for how we respond to the pandemic,” she said.
People she’s been in contact with have quarantined themselves while awaiting test results, she said. The TMS only has three people on staff, and one has already received a negative test result.
“I don’t want anybody going through what I’m going through because it’s not fun,” Cool said.
She hopes she got lucky getting so sick so soon that she stayed home right away and didn’t get anyone else sick. The TMS hopes that everyone who needed testing will have results back by Saturday, and Cool said the TMS staff constantly clean the museum space.
“I just want everybody to be safe,” Cool said, adding she has no idea where she got the coronavirus. Food to her now tastes differently, she said. “Extremely salty,” she admits.
Her recommendation? “Be diligent about wearing a mask when you’re out and about,” Cool said.
(More info: TexarkanaMuseums.org or 903-793-4831.)