The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
‘I’M ALIVE’
Connecticut’s first coronavirus patient out of a coma, on long road to recovery while back home with family
WILTON — As Chris Tillett lay in Danbury Hospital, with tubes sticking out of his body, barely able to move, he felt lucky.
Tillett, 45, spent 10 days in a medically induced coma recovering from the respiratory illness COVID-19. He’s had to relearn how to swallow, talk, walk and even use the bathroom.
Doctors say he is no longer contagious and is back home able to be close with his wife and two 5-month-old twin sons again. But he doesn’t feel safe carrying his infant sons from one room to another. And yet, as he lay in his hospital bed, his body atrophied, he had one thought.
“At least I’m alive,” he told Hearst Connecticut Media during a phone interview Thursday from his Wilton home.
Tillett, who was the first Connecticut resident to test positive for COVID-19, still struggles each day. He has cognitive problems, likely due to oxygen deprivation during his illness, that can make it difficult for him to follow a conversation. Like many COVID-19 patients, he has partially lost his sense of taste.
“I hope that wears off,” said Tillett, who returned home on Monday. “I used to love steak, and now I can barely choke it down.”
Tillett feels like he’s not the same person as he was before the illness — a razor-sharp cybersecurity expert who taught himself the trade and accumulated more than 25 years of experience. Now, Tillett still needs help with basic tasks and is re-learning how to walk.
He improves every day, and he never forgets that, unlike many who have contracted the illness, he survived.
His experience with COVID-19 began shortly after he returned from a work conference in California on Feb. 28. Tillett quickly became fatigued and developed a fever. At first, doctors thought he had the flu and, even after he tested negative for that illness, Tillett said he had trouble getting people to listen to his fears that he might have COVID-19.
Tillett said he believes that if had been taken seriously sooner, the illness might not have progressed to the point where he eventually developed bilateral pneumonia and ended up in Danbury Hospital’s intensive care unit. He eventually tested positive for COVID-19, and his wife and sons were quarantined
at home.
Tillett was put into a coma while doctors treated him.
“Because the situation with my lungs was so severe, the only way to clear them out was to put me out,” explained Tillett, who has an enlarged heart that makes him more susceptible to pneumonia.
Multiple times during a phone interview, Tillett pointed out that his experience does not happen to everyone who contracts the coronavirus, and he doesn’t want to induce panic.
“I don’t want anyone to get scared or fearful that, if they have this, that will happen to them,” he said.
Though Elizabeth Tillett, 32, was initially allowed to enter the hospital with her husband, she had to leave before he was even officially diagnosed with COVID-19, due to fears of infection. Elizabeth Tillett, a registered nurse, was in regular contact with the hospital about her husband’s care.
The hospital’s social worker allowed her to FaceTime with her husband when he was in a coma, so she could tell him that she and the babies loved him.
Yet, this all did little to fill the gaping hole left by her husband’s absence and his uncertain fate.
“Being quarantined at
home with your husband in the ICU is something I wouldn’t recommend to anyone,” Elizabeth Tillett said.
As she waited and worried, Chris Tillett lay in a coma, while doctors tried different drug protocols, hoping for a result. Tillett said he later heard that his doctors were on the phone with representatives of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, trying to determine the best treatment options.
Tillett said he admired the creativity and innovation of his doctors.
“I’ve also been an out-ofthe-box type of thinker,” he said, and he was pleased to see this quality reflected in his medical team. Overall, he and his wife said the staff at Danbury Hospital provided exemplary care.
Eventually, it was a cocktail of the malaria drug chloroquine, and the HIV drug Kaletra that ended up working for him. Tillett was brought out of the coma on March 17, but it was clear he had a long way to go before returning home.
Elizabeth Tillett said it was heartbreaking the first time she spoke to her husband after he came out of the coma. He didn’t recognize her, or know that he had two babies at home.
“That wasn’t my husband,” she said. “It wasn’t his mood. It wasn’t his affect.”
It was terrifying, and Elizabeth Tillett wasn’t sure she was ready to properly care for him at home.
Plus, Chris Tillett’s physical state had declined. He said he’d been told that each day in a medical coma is equal to three days lying in bed.
“So, basically, it was like I was living in bed for 30 days,” Tillett said, meaning his body was starting to atrophy and lose strength.
But, he was ready to fight. He worked hard to recover as much physical and cognitive function as he could before returning home “so Elizabeth wouldn’t have to take care of three kids, instead of just two,” he said.
Since coming home, he’s needed physical and cognitive therapy remotely instead of in an office, due to the restrictions meant to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Tillett is no longer considered contagious, but because he was on the COVID-19 floor of the hospital, he, his wife and children are self-quarantining at home for two more weeks.
It’s a slow recovery, but Tillett is glad to be improving each day.
“It really does give you a great sense of gratitude,” he said.
His wife is grateful, too. “The fact that he’s alive and we’re all under one roof together again is a tremendous relief,” she said.