A STORY OF HOPE
Wife recovers despite tragic diagnosis, couple reaffirms their love
MARYSVILLE, Wash. – Steve Jahn stood at the top of his driveway watching the final ambulance pull out. The first took his wife of 32 years two days before. The second took his father-in-law. The third, his mother-in-law. • It was eight weeks after the first known U.S. case of COVID-19 was reported in his home of Snohomish County, Washington. • He closed his eyes and prayed on the asphalt. • “The whole thing was surreal,” said Jahn, 62, who sells ambulances and fire trucks. “It was the one, two, three succession of having all three of them go in a matter of three days.”
For his wife, Peggy Jahn, 62, memories of that day are blurry – except for one. In the middle of the night, hours after she was rolled into a small isolation room at Providence Regional Medical Center, a doctor came in to deliver the news.
“You’re not going to survive this,” Peggy recalled him saying. “Call your family. Let your family know that you’re not going to make it.”
‘I’m not supposed to survive this’
Snohomish County natives Steve and Peggy Jahn met on a blind date in 1988. He was a single dad raising his son while working as a volunteer firefighter and emergency vehicles salesman. She was working for a marketing company in downtown Seattle.
“I found myself saying, ‘I think I’m in love with you,’ like a few weeks down the road,” Steve said as he sat clutching Peggy’s knee and casting her a sidelong grin on their back patio. “We think it was inspired from above, to be honest with you, because there’s no other logical explanation for it, as is her recovery.”
They barely spoke on their first date, but they felt the chemistry instantly. Steve invited Peggy over with a couple of friends and cooked hamburgers before taking her out to see “Die Hard.” Within six months, they were
married.
Peggy and Steve raised four kids together in Steve’s childhood home on the Tulalip Tribes Reservation, overlooking Tulalip Bay in Snohomish County, just north of Seattle. Four years ago, they moved into a house farther inland, in Marysville, so Peggy’s mom, Lillian Wattum, 95, and her husband, Howard Stiles, 90, could move in with them.
When their local hospital admitted the first known U.S. coronavirus patient Jan. 20, 2020, Peggy and Steve read about it in the newspaper. It was “weird,” Steve said.
Peggy fell sick in early March after a long day of running errands. She went to bed that night, exhausted, and didn’t leave for 10 days. When Steve returned from a business trip, they scheduled a telehealth appointment for Peggy, and the doctor said she probably had the flu.
By March 11, Peggy still wasn’t better, and Stiles was feeling ill, too.
“Of course, there was more news about the virus at that point, so I took him up to a nearby clinic, and we had him tested,” Steve said. “On Friday the 13th of all days, his test came back positive for COVID. At that point, I’m like, oh my gosh, this seems to be the real deal.”
Quarantined at home with Steve and her parents, Peggy had a second telehealth appointment. This time, doctors advised her to come in. She wanted to take a shower before heading to the hospital, but she never made it to the bathroom. The room turned blurry; all she could see was gray.
Steve watched in horror as Peggy bent over and gasped for breath. He shifted into first responder mode and called 911.
By the time staff took her vitals at the hospital, Peggy’s oxygen levels were dangerously low. It was late that night when the pulmonologist told her she wasn’t going to make it.
“It didn’t register with me. I tried calling my daughter, but she didn’t have her phone on. And I got ahold of my son, but he was trying to be positive,” Peggy said. “I texted my friends, the ones that I wanted to let know. I said, ‘I love you. I’m not supposed to survive this.’ ”
Steve got a call, then a selfie of Peggy with her oxygen mask on, “looking like death on the edge.” The two decided she would go on a ventilator that day, March 15.
“We texted pretty much nonstop until 6:59 a.m., and that’s when she said, ‘I’m in ICU now and they’re going to vent,’ and then, boom,” Steve said. “That was the last communication I had with her until the second week of April.”
As the medical staff prepared to sedate Peggy to intubate her, she heard two final words before weeks of silence: “Let’s go.”
‘A hand grenade’
As the sun rose that interminable day on March 15, Stiles took a turn for the worse. His oxygen levels started to drop, and he was having greater difficulty breathing. Steve called for the ambulance again and the same archaic, “ratty-old bone box came,” he said.
Wattum had a low-grade fever. When Peggy’s two brothers arrived, the group decided Wattum might as well go to the hospital, too, because of her age. With his brother-in-laws, their wives and kids, Steve prayed on the driveway.
“We just prayed for a miracle,” he said. “Oddly enough, within four or five hours, the hospital called and said, hey, you need to come and get your motherin-law, she’s not sick enough to stay here.”
Steve picked Wattum up at the hospital that evening. Isolated and missing their partners, the pair clung to one another and to their community. As word spread of the family’s situation, members of their church left food at the door, and some gathered to sing hymns in the backyard. Steve opened the sliding glass door and sang along from a distance as Wattum sat with her eyes closed and hands raised.
“It was one of the most blessed, yet hardest times of my entire life,” Steve said.
Steve called the hospital several times a day. He wanted to know whether Peggy or Stiles was eligible to receive remdesivir, an antiviral drug originally developed to treat Ebola. Stiles received the treatment and was discharged March 25 after 11 days in the hospital.
As Peggy remained in the hospital, the youngest kids, Peter, 30, and Heidi, 29, came to stay with their dad. They kept friends and relatives – including some as far as Norway – updated on Peggy’s situation through a Facebook page, where the group shared photos, messages and music.
Steve tried to stay busy. He did laundry, swept, vacuumed, mopped, mopped again. When his kids put down their cups, he’d place them in the dishwasher before they were even done with them.
“They’d say, ‘Dad!’ And I’d say, I have to maintain some order. It’s all I can do,” Steve said. “I’ve run a company. I’ve been a fire chief. I’m used to making decisions and making stuff happen. And I couldn’t do anything, and that was the hardest thing.”
Steve couldn’t bring himself to enter his bedroom. Most nights, he slept on a downstairs recliner, next to the home phone, staring at it before he went to sleep around 2 a.m.
“It was like a hand grenade with the pin pulled, and I’m just waiting for it to explode,” he said. “I felt if that house phone rang ... I was going to get the news that I didn’t want to get. So every morning I’d say, ‘Thank you, God,’ that phone didn’t ring last night.”
Steve wore Peggy’s rings on a gold chain, clutching them like rosary beads. One night in late March, he glanced in the mirror and saw the rings on his chest.
“I just kind of lost it. That’s the first time I actually lost it,” Steve said. “And I just looked up and said, God, either give her back or take her.”
Days later, the grenade exploded. Two doctors were on the phone, asking Steve to come in to discuss “Peggy’s transition.” Steve was escorted up to the sixth floor of the hospital April 6.
The doctors stopped Steve just outside Peggy’s room. They had placed a trach in her throat, and she was going to need a feeding tube. She may never again be the Peggy he knew, they told him: Did he want to put her through that?
Steve got 10 minutes in the room with Peggy. He knelt down beside her bed. “Hey, honey, I’m here. I’m here,” he said.
Her eyes moved just a hint, and Steve walked around the other side of her bed.
“She slowly turned her head my way. So I’m like OK, she’s responding. She hears us,” he said.
Steve walked out of the room knowing Peggy was going to make it. That night, he got a call from a nurse telling him that Peggy had wiggled her toes on command, twice.
“That was the first thing I remember, was wiggling my toes,” Peggy said.
It was the beginning of her recovery. And the start of her delirium.
‘Come and get me’
Peggy finally came off the ventilator April 8, after 25 days.
A few days later, Steve received a FaceTime call around 3 a.m. It was Peggy. She couldn’t speak with the trach in her throat, but she was flailing around and trying to communicate something. Steve dialed the hospital.
“I’m like, good gosh, I’m going to see her die on FaceTime in the hospital,” he said.
A nurse rushed into the room and checked Peggy’s vitals. Everything was normal, but Peggy was trying to mouth words. She handed Peggy a dry erase board.
“So she writes, and the nurse holds it up: ‘Come get me.’ And I’m like, oh, honey, I wish I could come get you,” Steve said.
Doctors say it’s common to experience delirium in the ICU. The sensation was “freaky weird,” Peggy said.
She spoke to her family again for the first time the day after Easter, Peter’s 30th birthday, babbling on about how her phone had been hijacked and the nurses were plotting against her.
“I don’t remember much,” Peggy said. “I just remember a mom has to talk to their kid on their birthday, and I missed his birthday.”
Peggy spent 42 days in the hospital. She lost her hair and had to learn to walk again after losing muscle while in paralysis on the ventilator. The first time she worked with physical therapists, Peggy could barely lift her toes. Before she was discharged, she had to walk 25 steps.
Her goal, Peggy told the physical therapists, was to hold a weed wacker and do her own yardwork again. The physical therapists couldn’t promise her that or that she’d ever drive again.
Steve picked Peggy up from the hospital April 24. On the drive home, Steve showed Peggy the empty hotel parking lots and barren malls. When she had gone to bed in her room in early March, life was normal. She emerged from the hospital to what Steve called “the apocalypse.”
As the two pulled into the driveway, Peggy saw posters of support lining both sides of the asphalt. “It was very overwhelming,” she said.
As Peggy continues her recovery at home, she’s walking. She’s weed wacking. She’s remodeling the bayside home where she and Steve raised their children. Last week, Peggy hopped in the car and drove the 20 minutes out to the house.
Days after a historic windstorm wiped out power to the county, the water was still. Peggy roamed the house, ripping up carpet and sharing memories. She propped up a ladder in her daughter’s old room and began covering the chipped paint with a fresh coat.
Steve stood on the back deck, watching two seals bobbing in the water and pointing to two bald eagles that had landed in their tree. He’s still processing the trauma of what happened. After 29 years in the fire department, he never had post-traumatic stress disorder. Now he does.
Steve said the experience, as stressful as it was, helped him break down some walls with his kids that he didn’t even know were there. For Peggy, her kids are finally answering her phone calls.
“I think the kids appreciate mom a whole lot more,” she said with a wink. “I can get away with a lot more.”
Last week, as staff at Providence Regional Medical Center paused and the nation observed a moment of silence for the 400,000 souls lost to COVID-19 in the USA, Peggy and Steve celebrated their 32nd wedding anniversary.
Steve re-proposed April 15 as Peggy was leaving the ICU after 32 days.
Her hand shook as she held her iPhone up to her face in the hospital bed.
In their living room 15 miles away, Steve got down on one knee, dressed in a T-shirt and pajama pants, on Facetime.
“I clearly feel like I’ve been given a second chance to share what’s already been an amazing 31 years,” he said into his phone. “I just want to say, Peggy Jahn, would you remarry me at your earliest convenience?”
Peggy cracked a smile: “Come and get me.”
ALABAMA Montgomery: The state is getting roughly half as much COVID19 vaccine as it was expecting based on federal plans announced last year, officials said Friday, meaning it would take more than two years to vaccinate all adults without improvement.
ALASKA Juneau: Renters will have to wait before receiving their allotments from up to $200 million in federal coronavirus aid. The Alaska Housing Finance Corp. said it is still forming plans to distribute the funds, the Anchorage Daily News reports.
ARIZONA Prescott Valley: A multipurpose arena is the latest large venue in the state to become a COVID-19 vaccination site. Cottonwood-based Spectrum Healthcare on Monday will open an appointment-only setup inside Findlay Toyota Center.
ARKANSAS Little Rock: Gov. Asa Hutchinson noted a decline of nearly 1,000 new daily cases Friday from the same time last week, saying he hopes the trend will soon be reflected in a decrease in deaths.
CALIFORNIA Chula Vista: A federal appeals court has denied South Bay United Pentecostal Church’s request to overturn state coronavirus rules barring worship services indoors. The Sacramento Bee said Friday’s ruling leaves the door open for addressing attendance limits if a county is in a less-restrictive COVID-19 tier.
COLORADO Denver: The Regional Transportation District in Colorado has halted layoffs for about 250 employees after it received more than $200 million in federal coronavirus aid, officials said. It also reversed furloughs and salary cuts planned for its highest-paid management employees, The Denver Post reports.
CONNECTICUT Hartford: An attorney representing families and the CT Freedom Alliance, who are challenging state rules requiring students to wear face masks in school, has asked the state Supreme Court to get involved, the Hartford Courant reports.
DELAWARE Dover: Officials are offering incentives to encourage inmates to get a vaccine when it’s available. The offers include five days of good time credits, a free video visit, and a snack bag or special meal, The Delaware State News reports.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Washington: As thousands of National Guard troops departed the city, a U.S. official said Friday that approximately 150 of 26,000 troops deployed to the capital have tested positive for the coronavirus, WUSA-TV reports.
FLORIDA Tallahassee: Gov. Ron DeSantis had a made-for-TV moment: A 100-year-old World War II veteran getting a vaccine against COVID-19. “An American hero,” he proclaimed Friday, would be the 1 millionth senior in his state to get the lifesaving shot. The Republican governor later walked back the claim, saying the injection was symbolic of Florida being on track to hit 1 million doses soon.
GEORGIA Savannah: The NAACP has filed suit against state prison officials, blaming a lack of coronavirus testing and insufficient safeguards for an outbreak that infected nearly 1 in 10 inmates at a Coffee County site.
HAWAII Honolulu: The state reports its hotel occupancy rates declined by more than half in December from the same time in 2019, although the rates have gradually increased in recent months. Hawaii Tourism Authority data shows 23.9% of rooms were full last month amid the pandemic.
IDAHO Boise: Gov. Brad Little on Friday ripped lawmakers for jeopardizing efforts to fight the coronavirus and called on residents to contact their senators and representatives as they push legislation aiming to strip away some of his authority during a crisis. In an anger-tinged speech on live television, the Republican governor said the GOP-led Legislature is perpetuating false information and trying to score political points.
ILLINOIS Chicago: The Chicago Teachers Union said Sunday that its members voted to defy an order to return to the classroom Monday, before they have been vaccinated against COVID-19, setting up a showdown with district officials.
INDIANA Indianapolis: The state’s COVID-19 metrics have reached their lowest levels in more than two months, and Gov. Eric Holcomb said he is considering rolling back restrictions on crowd sizes.
IOWA Des Moines: Gov. Kim Reynolds said Thursday that the state would make COVID-19 vaccines available Feb. 1 to all Iowans 65 or older, plus those in certain professions, such as school staff, first responders and child care workers.
KANSAS Mission: Online sign-ups for vaccinations are filling up almost as quickly as they are posted, as health officials begin moving beyond immunizing just health care workers and long-term care residents. The state doesn’t yet have nearly enough doses now that about 1 million people are eligible.
LOUISIANA Baton Rouge: Nearly six weeks after vaccinations began, Louisiana on Friday began releasing demographic details on who has received shots, but the data lacks key pieces of information to determine if doses are being distributed equitably, with many providers not identifying recipients’ race.
MAINE Augusta: A group of lawmakers responsible for overseeing the rules of the state’s two legislative chambers is reviewing pandemic protocols in response to complaints about members not wearing effective face masks.
MARYLAND Annapolis: Gov. Larry Hogan has called on all schools in the state to resume in-person learning by March 1, if not sooner.
MASSACHUSETTS Boston: Nearly 2,000 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine were spoiled at a Veterans Affairs hospital after a contractor accidentally unplugged a freezer, hospital officials announced Thursday.
MICHIGAN Lansing: State Health and Human Services Director Robert Gordon abruptly resigned Friday, just hours after he signed a revised order that will let restaurants and bars resume indoor dining Feb. 1.
MINNESOTA Minneapolis: Health officials reported Friday that the state has been allocated 871,650 doses of COVID-19 vaccine. If all 5.6 million residents were to get two shots, the federally controlled vaccine allocated so far would amount to less than 8% of what’s needed.
MISSISSIPPI Jackson: The state’s top health official criticized the rollout of vaccines within long-term care facilities Friday. “We gave them too much vaccine too soon,” State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said. The Department of Health is having conversations with CVS and Walgreens about whether some of the doses allocated to them need to be pulled back for use at sites that are moving more quickly, he said.
MISSOURI St. Louis: The state’s health department doesn’t include antigen tests in its count of coronavirus cases, meaning tens of thousands of positive tests have not been included in its tally.
MONTANA Helena: A bill that would protect businesses and health care providers from coronavirus-related lawsuits is advancing quickly through the Legislature, after Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte said the measure was necessary to eventually remove a statewide mask mandate put in place by his Democratic predecessor.
NEBRASKA Lincoln: A mass vaccination event that helped the state record one of its most productive days in its campaign to distribute shots could serve as a model for future events. Health officials in Lincoln said roughly 2,400 health care workers received the vaccine Friday at the Pinnacle Bank Arena.
NEVADA Reno: Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley wants the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on a legal battle over the government’s authority to limit the size of religious gatherings amid the COVID-19 pandemic even after the church won an appeals court ruling that found the state’s restrictions unconstitutional.
NEW HAMPSHIRE Concord: School districts are losing money because the state’s funding formula is based on metrics heavily affected by the pandemic. Sixteen mayors and school board leaders wrote to Gov. Chris Sununu and legislative leaders expressing their concerns about free and reduced-price meal programs.
NEW JERSEY East Rutherford: The state’s newest COVID-19 vaccination mega-site has opened. Officials on Friday said the site inside the old Meadowlands Racetrack is one of the final six mega-sites to open across New Jersey.
NEW MEXICO Albuquerque: Vaccination clinics scheduled for hundreds of public school employees in the city and surrounding communities won’t happen after all, prompting criticism from a lawmaker and disappointment from top administrators at two school districts. Health officials say the state is focusing the current round of vaccinations on people 75 and older and those with underlying medical conditions that put them at higher risk.
NEW YORK New York: A Staten Island bar owner who struck a sheriff ’s deputy with a car last month, breaking both of his legs, will only face criminal charges alleging he served patrons indoors in defiance of state coronavirus restrictions.
NORTH CAROLINA Raleigh: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced Friday that it avoided returning to campus 112 undergraduate students who tested positive for the coronavirus through its new mass testing program.
NORTH DAKOTA Bismarck: State health officials said eight more people have died from complications due to COVID-19, according to data released Saturday.
OHIO Columbus: Gov. Mike DeWine on Friday ordered $390 million in across-the-board budget cuts for the rest of the fiscal year, citing the economic impact of the pandemic. He also extended the state’s 10 p.m.to-5 a.m. curfew until Jan. 30.
Oklahoma City:
OKLAHOMA
Health officials plan to work with retailers and faith leaders in minority communities across the state to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines. The Oklahoma State Department of Health plans to unveil vaccine-dispensing sites in minority communities in the coming weeks, Deputy Health Commissioner Keith Reed said Friday.
OREGON Portland: Gov. Kate Brown on Friday defended her decision to reject federal guidelines and prioritize teachers for the COVID-19 vaccine before the elderly, saying if all of Oregon’s seniors were vaccinated first, teachers would likely not be vaccinated before the school year ends, and many students would not return to in-person learning.
PENNSYLVANIA Harrisburg: The Republican-controlled Legislature on Friday took another step in the drive to strip future governors of some of their constitutional authority under emergency declarations and give lawmakers more control over the declarations. The Senate Veterans Affairs and Emergency Preparedness Committee approved it on a partyline basis, 7-4.
RHODE ISLAND Providence: Advocates for the elderly are calling on the state to prioritize vaccinating a wider group of older residents against COVID-19. The AARP’s Rhode Island office on Friday demanded that the state’s vaccination plan immediately prioritize doses for residents 50 and older.
SOUTH CAROLINA Columbia: After a slow start and concerns about adequate supplies, efforts to roll out the COVID-19 vaccine kicked into high gear this past week. On Thursday, Dr. Brannan Traxler, the state’s interim public health director, said it receives from the federal government 60,000 to 64,000 first doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines each week. That same amount would be guaranteed for the second round of vaccines.
SOUTH DAKOTA Spearfish: More than 20% of the state’s children have missed routine vaccinations since the COVID-19 pandemic swept the country. “We have families that are nervous to take their children into a clinic because of COVID, and so they are skipping multiple well child checks,” said Dr. Rose Oakley, a pediatrician with Monument Health in Spearfish.
TENNESSEE Nashville: Lawmakers on Friday finished tackling education issues that surfaced during the pandemic, as Republicans fumed that some districts still are not back in classrooms but declined to act on their proposal to withhold state funding for staying virtual.
TEXAS Laredo: A raging coronavirus outbreak in the city, now one of the biggest hot spots in the U.S., is leading to hundreds of new cases a day.
UTAH Salt Lake City: Gov. Spencer Cox is ordering COVID-19 vaccine shots set aside as second doses to be redistributed as first doses to new people if the original patient doesn’t come back for a follow-up appointment within a few weeks.
VERMONT Montpelier: The state will start vaccinating residents 75 and older Wednesday and will begin taking registrations for appointments for that age group Monday, officials said.
VIRGINIA Richmond: The state is lagging others on tracking COVID-19 vaccinations by race and ethnicity. Virginia is one of only 17 states that were publicly reporting vaccination data by race and ethnicity as of last week, but the state’s COVID-19 website indicates race and ethnicity data has not been reported for more than half of the roughly 475,000 people who have received at least one dose.
WASHINGTON Seattle: Federal authorities arrested a suburban Seattle man who advertised a supposed COVID-19 “vaccine” he said he created in his personal lab. Johnny T. Stine, 56, could face up to one year in prison if convicted, KUOW reports.
WEST VIRGINIA Charleston: Republican Gov. Jim Justice was sworn in to a second and final term Friday. He said in a 20-minute speech that “West Virginia is really on the move” despite challenges wrought by the pandemic and a population that has declined for eight straight years.
WISCONSIN Madison: Republicans who control the Legislature plan to vote Tuesday on a resolution that would end the statewide mask mandate designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
WYOMING Casper: A man who died in December was the state’s first inmate killed by COVID-19. The cause took time to confirm by autopsy, the Wyoming Department of Corrections announced Friday.