I was the first person in my town to get Covid. I ended up in the hospital, but the doctors didn’t believe that I’d caught the virus, and there were problems with the tests.

Covid gave me a second chance

We were all congratulating ourselves that West Virginia was the last state in the country with no Covid cases. But my husband was sick, and would soon become Covid patient number one in West Virginia.

Lack of PPE, insufficient safety protocols, and lack of testing contributed to this physical therapist and 60% of her colleagues contracting COVID-19.

I spent four months bed-bound. I had a temperature part of every day for five months. Finally, I was prescribed a steroid inhaler which helped the horrible, suffocating chest tightness. But until recently, everything that I found to help, I had to find myself with the amazing help of covid support groups online.

This survivor left the hospital to discover an even bigger surprise.

She caught Covid early on, spent months recovering, and is now working to rebuild her life.

Mom, Dad, and Son All on Life Support in ICU

This COVID-19 survivor couldn’t work, but couldn’t get a doctor’s note to take time off to recuperate because of a false negative.

This athlete has been benched for 15 months because of Covid-19 related symptoms including dysautonomia.

“I knew it was real, but I didn't think it would come to North Carolina…Two weeks into it, I had already been to the doctor four times because I kept picking up new symptoms every day.”

Miraculously, after eight days on a ventilator and thirty days in the hospital, Mike was able to walk back into his home.

“A medical team in PPE came into my room, and my doctor said they were going to put me on a ventilator…”

“Eight days later I woke up, in a different hospital, from a ventilator. I was surrounded by Drs and Nursing staff, clapping and crying, ‘You’re alive! Praise God!’”

“In order to go back to work, I should be able to handle a full shift in PPE, and I can’t do that yet. Right now even when I wear my N95 mask to go to the grocery store, I start coughing after about half an hour of wearing it. I definitely can't wear the PPE for a full eight hours.”

“There was also a fear of being Asian during this pandemic and the fear mongering that spread throughout the country. I heard the stories of the hate crimes going on and some even occurred in Philly. This was something that added on to my daily stresses as I am certain there was plenty of misinformation being spread. I didn’t need to have a target on mine or Ariel’s back.”

“I was technically one of the first 50 cases in the city to be confirmed.”

“If I were to go back to March or even February, if I knew then when I know now, I would take a lot of different precautions. in the beginning, I was one of those people. I said, ‘Oh, people are overreacting. It's never going to get me. It's never going to get my family. The percentages are too low.’ It really gave me a kick in the pants. My girlfriend, brother, and my mother all got it.”

After experiencing COVID-19 for herself, Gail decided to do something more to get the facts out there.

“All you thought was it’s a death sentence and I’m living proof it’s not...There are hundreds of us every day coming home.”