NEW GLARUS, Wis. – One of the first people in Green County to be treated for COVID-19 is sharing her near-death experience in hopes others take the virus more seriously.
“There are so many people not taking it seriously,” Renee Richards said. “I didn’t take it seriously.”
Richards flew home to rural New Glarus from her daughter’s wedding in Denver in mid-March. About a week later on her birthday, she noticed something was off. She felt a pain in her chest she thought might be a pulled muscle. Throughout the course of the next week, more symptoms arose, including congestion and a loss of taste and smell.
“I was having breathing problems, coughing to the point of getting physically sick,” Richards said. “I was basically drowning in my own body.”
By that point, she couldn’t raise her voice loud enough to tell her husband in the same house that she had to go to the hospital, so she texted him. While at the Monroe Clinic Hospital, she said a doctor told her she would need to be intubated and put into an induced coma or she wouldn’t make it through the night.
“I said, ‘No way.’ I have to talk to my daughter. I have to talk to my mother. I have to talk to my husband,” Richards said. “I said, ‘Do whatever you have to do to let me have those conversations, because if something were to happen, I need to be able to … I need to say something to them.”
After the phone conversations, it was a whirlwind, with Richards being transferred to St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison, waking up two days later in the intensive care unit confused and hallucinating, before gradually moving to the respiratory wing, where she was allowed to speak with her husband again.
“I think he was crying before he answered the phone,” Richards said. “He hadn’t seen my name on the phone for days.”
Eventually, Richards was able to see something new, as well.
“When I got out, spring happened in the nine days I was in the hospital, and everything looks different now,” she said. “It’s amazing how much you appreciate everything after you’ve been through something like that, and the little things that used to matter don’t really matter anymore.”
She sees life with a fresh pair of eyes and hopes others will, too.
“It’s not a hoax. That’s the one word I keep hearing that makes me angry and almost makes me sad for the people that believe that,” Richards said. “It’s not a joke. It’s not something only the elderly get. It’s not just the flu.”
COVID-19 has left its mark. Richards said she now struggles with depression for the first time in her life.
“The recovery was brutal and still is brutal,” she said.
She’s found a way to take that mark and make it into something beautiful, getting a floral tattoo of a set of lungs two weeks ago.
“I was like, ‘That’s perfect,’” she said. “(It’s) absolutely a symbol of strength. Warrior, I beat it.”
Richards is grateful to her medical team and all who have supported her.
“No way I could have done this alone, no way,” she said.
Richards said she’s able to return to work next week after not working for months. While insurance covered the majority of her medical bills topping $100,000, she still owed more than $5,100. Her daughter started a GoFundMe page to help with the expenses.
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The Link LonkJuly 24, 2020 at 08:11AM
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'It's not a joke': New Glarus woman shares near-death experience with COVID-19 - Channel3000.com - WISC-TV3
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