The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
St. Vincent’s 1st COVID patient recounts ordeal
Skoog was shocked the first time she met Rodney Davis.
Skoog is nursing director of Critical Care and Cardiology at St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport. Like care providers across the country, she spent the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic preparing to care for patients sickened by the respiratory illness.
In those days, most of the talk was about how the illness was most severe in elderly and medically compromised patients.
But the first COVID-19 patient at St. Vincent’s was Davis, an otherwise healthy 21-year-old from Bridgeport.
“I was a little bit surprised that Rodney would be our first patient,” Skoog said during a Wednesday press conference. “It was brought up to everybody that this was a virus that affected the elderly the most.”
Davis’s age didn’t protect him from quickly becoming extremely ill with the novel coronavirus. He needed to be put on a ventilator and was in the hospital for 35 days, most of it under sedation, receiving critical care.
When he was released on May 3, family, friends and St. Vincent’s staff gathered to applaud and cheer. That was the last time that Skoog had seen Davis, until Wednesday’s press conference, when the two connected virtually at the event, facilitated by St. Vincent’s parent company, Hartford HealthCare.
Skoog told Davis she was thrilled to see him, even if it wasn’t in person.
“Rodney, it’s just amazing to see you look so good,” she said. “The last time I saw you, you were walking down the hall here at St. Vincent’s, trying to get out those doors as quick as you could and we were all cheering for you.”
Davis, for his part, said he was feeling better — a vast improvement from the early days of his recovery when he couldn’t stand up and wasn’t interested in eating. But, he said, he’s on the road to recovery.
“I feel so much more comfortable just walking around the house,” he said. “Day by day, I’m doing so much better.”
Davis said he didn’t remember much after his first day at the hospital, though he recalls that his subconscious was working the whole time, dreaming of his recovery.
“I wanted to wake up and I couldn’t,” he said. “I guess I was still, like, fighting for my life, knowlator, ing I was in the hospital.”
Skoog filled Davis in on some of the care he received in the hospital. She said it was soon evident that Davis was struggling with his breathing and needed to be put on a ventilator.
“I don’t know if you remember that, but I hope you were comfortable,” Skoog said. “I hope we were able to ease your pain and your worry a little bit, but I’m sure it was an experience you can barely describe.”
In addition to the ventiSusan Skoog described a treatment called proning, in which the patient is flipped on their belly to help the lungs become oxygenated.
“We pulled out everything we had in our bag of tricks,” she said.
After about three weeks, Davis finally got “over the hump,” Skoog said, and began to recover. During Wednesday’s video conference, Davis seemed healthy and upbeat and said he was grateful for the treatment he received.
“They helped me a lot and they never gave up,” Davis said of the St. Vincent’s staff. “I’m blessed. I’m a miracle, to be honest.”
Also at Wednesday’s event was Jeffrey Flaks, president and CEO, Hartford HealthCare. He said Davis’s story shows that the pandemic isn’t about statistics — it’s about people.
“Underneath every one of those statistics is a human being with their own story,” Flaks said. “Rodney’s an unbelievable inspiration.”