At first, the hospital would not allow Joey to have visitors. He needed to be what they called, “de-escalated,” which basically meant when he was no longer contagious. Unfortunately, they calculated time from when he tested positive at the hospital, not his first, original test from the clinic or even onset of symptoms. That meant we could not visit until Tuesday, October 26th.

The Masks

Since I couldn’t visit, I asked Joey to take a selfie so I could see what the mask looked like. Anytime he changed to a different mask, he would send a picture.

The third mask was considered a high flow oxygen mask. Joey had informed me that he was not sure what came next.

UPDATE: “Joey’s doctor said his lungs are super sick and they’ll be checking his heart and other organs to make sure nothing else is going on. He’s pretty sure he’ll be in there at least three weeks.”

It was then that I sent out a plea on Facebook to anyone and everyone asking them to pray.

There Is Power In the Name of Jesus

Text from Joey…
Joey: (about the mask) It looks clunky, but it’s a c-pap machine for sleep apnea. Oxygen in the 90’s.
Me: Yay!!!! How are you feeling? Any other updates?
Joey: Feeling good, no updates. I’m trying to move around, I just have to be careful. My lung capacity won’t allow me to do much yet. But I’m fighting.

His O2 was in the 90’s and I was so happy, I had to tell everyone on Facebook. “There is power in the name of Jesus, my friends!” And then, just like that, the next day he was declining again.

October 20. The doctor had called to inform me of Joey’s declining stats. By the time he had made the call, they had gone back up again. He also informed me they had a discussion about intubation.

That day, I found out I had pneumonia. Thankfully, I could treat it at home with medication and antibiotics, but to say the boys and I were miserable, was an understatement.

By Friday, doctors explained that this would be a very long process. They often told us that improvement could take many weeks, even months. Joey was critical, but stable.

The Rollercoaster Heads to the ICU

The following day, the rollercoaster took off once again, only to pause for a while in the ICU.

October 24. UPDATE: “Joey’s doctor called at 3:30 am. Joey was moved to the ICU yesterday. He’s not getting better and they are closer to having to intubate…Please pray for a miracle!”

With Joey getting worse, and us not being able to visit yet, the doctor wanted us to have a FaceTime call with her and Joey to discuss everything. I got the kids together and thankfully some friends from church, along with my mom came over to pray with us. God knew we were going to need their support.

As me and the kids sat on the couch, looking at Joey on the screen, it was nothing less than heartbreaking. It was almost impossible to understand Joey since his mask was so loud with all the oxygen blowing through it. With the amount of pressure that it placed on his face, we could barely understand his words. His chest rising and falling from breathing so fast, as if he had just finished sprinting but it never slowed back down. You could tell he was striving for every breath that he took and every time he tried to speak it took more energy from him.

The kids and I tried our best not to cry in front of him, but it was impossible. The doctor told us how sick he was. She told us that he was fighting for every breath and it was tiring him out. His respiratory rate (RR), which is breaths per minute, ranged from the 30’s to the 50’s. A normal rate is 12 to 16 breaths per minute. She explained that having this high of a RR for too long could cause cardiac arrest.

That Dreaded Word…Intubation

Joey and I had heard mixed things about intubation during COVID. We hadn’t heard of many success stories of people who had been intubated that recovered. We made the decision that unless it was absolutely necessary, we didn’t want to intubate. When Cameron asked the doctor about the statistics of coming off the ventilator after being intubated, the doctor matter-of-factly said, “I’m going to be honest with you, 1 in 10 people come off of intubation.”

That broke us. I told Joey that I would support whatever he wanted to do. But he didn’t know what to do. The doctor, seeing how distraught and unsure of everything he was, suggested giving Joey some medication, Precedex, that would help calm him down, hopefully bringing his RR down as well. They would also give him some Ativan to help the anxiety that he was now having. She said they would try that until we could see him in a couple of days and go from there. We agreed. We hung up and fell apart.

Our World Was Starting to Fall Apart and There Was Absolutely Nothing I Could Do About It

As I sat there and cried with my kids, I couldn’t believe what was happening. I don’t remember if I said it out loud or not, but I cried out to God, “Please don’t take him, please!” I knew Joey was fighting and I somehow wanted him to make it all stop, to make things better like he always did. But he couldn’t. Our world was starting to fall apart and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

All I could think about was something Joey said during that call…”It’ll be okay, we know we”ll be together again.” It was then that I realized what he meant. He didn’t mean we’d be together in a few days. He meant that as Christians, if God took him, we’d be together again someday. As much as I knew that was true, I didn’t want to hear that. I prayed that God wouldn’t take him and I prayed that we would see him in a couple of days, but I wasn’t sure of that either.

…to be continued.