A respiratory therapist working with coronavirus patients in New York City contracted the virus himself in mid-March. After recovering, he’s now back to work helping others who are suffering.
Raeburn Fairweather, a 47-year-old father of five, told the New York Post he began feeling symptoms of the coronavirus soon after he worked a triple shift at Brooklyn’s Maimonides Medical Center on March 17. Fairweather’s job includes “inserting and removing ventilator tubes from the tracheas of coronavirus patients,” the Post reported. Fairweather said that in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, before hospital staff knew just how dangerous and contagious the virus was, they “did not wear protective gear” around patients they didn’t suspect had COVID-19.
“I’m going to be honest with you, the staff was still somewhat laid back about it,” he told the outlet.
Fairweather took a coronavirus test on March 18 and learned it was positive the following Monday, March 22. Thus began a two-week battle with the virus that left him at one point with a 104-degree fever, the loss of smell and taste, headaches, and an intense cough that produced “thick, white mucus during Day Three – and that carried on until Thursday of last week,” he told the Post.
Tylenol would not bring the headache down, he said. “My body felt like it was falling apart,” he told a Post reporter.
“Headaches were immense. They were making my eyeballs feel like they were on springs,” he added.
“If your body cannot fight, you will not make it,” he told the Post. “It wears your body down.”
Fairweather told the outlet he quarantined himself in an extra room in his family’s rowhouse and avoided contact with his wife and 11-year-old son, the only one of his five children still living at home. He said neither ended up showing symptoms.
To treat himself, Fairweather used Tylenol and “traditional Caribbean home remedies made with turmeric, garlic and ginger,” the Post reported. Fairweather is a native of Jamaica.
Maimonides Medical Center has a policy that allows “employees who recover from the coronavirus to resume work on their fourth consecutive day without a fever,” the Post reported. This, unfortunately, allowed Fairweather to return to work the same day he tested positive for COVID-19 because he hadn’t had a fever for three days. He later left work to recover.
Once Fairweather fully recovered, he was eager to return to work. He told the Post he “didn’t hesitate” to return to work even though his first shift lasted “17 hours non-stop” on Monday, leaving him exhausted.
“I love my job, and I was very bored at home,” he told the outlet.
The Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering has been tracking coronavirus cases around the world and reports that there have been nearly 1 million confirmed cases of the virus worldwide, with just under 50,000 deaths, though those numbers may be even higher because some countries – particularly China – have not been forthcoming with data regarding the number of coronavirus cases. Italy has experienced the most reported deaths from the virus, according to the tracker, while the U.S. has reported more than 5,000 deaths.