After 79 days in hospital fighting COVID, Fort Worth-area woman gets ‘second chance’
COVID-19 pain first hit Paola Castillo in an area where she least expected — her kidneys.
“I thought it was my diabetes,” she said.
Six days would pass after that first pain before the 24-year-old North Richland Hills woman would be admitted to Medical City North Hills Hospital, where she would test positive for COVID-19. Another 79 days would pass before her discharge on July 15, the cheers of the health care workers who witnessed her journey ringing in the hallway.
Doctors said Castillo was near death when she was admitted and told her mother and husband that things were touch and go during her initial days of treatment.
Castillo says she is not sure how much longer it may take to finally rid herself from the ravages of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
Castillo said from her mother’s home in Olney on Tuesday that she is receiving speech therapy to regain her voice and physical therapy to strengthen her ability to walk. Castillo was placed on a ventilator within 24 hours of being admitted, and being in bed for so long has left her in a weakened condition.
“I was intubated for so long it affected my vocal chords,” Castillo said. “I can only eat soft foods. Things have to be pureed. I was under an induced coma. I am able to walk a little bit now in a walker, but it will still take some time for me to get back to my normal self. It just depends on how much I can do for myself.”
Patients undergo intubation when they have difficulty breathing, according to WebMD. A tube is inserted down the patient’s throat into their windpipe, while a ventilator helps them breathe.
Castillo said she had spent more than a month in a medically induced coma attached to a ventilator when she saw a light while in a dream-like state.
“It was God speaking to me,” Castillo said. “And it’s like He gave me a second chance to live my life again. He said it’s time to wake up. You’re healed. It’s time to fight now.”
Castillo said she dreamed the entire time she was in a coma and that something bad was always happening in her dreams.
“I kept fighting and fighting. I was fighting to stay alive,” Castillo said. “I knew that even though bad things were happening, I was fighting and I would wake up in another dream.”
In one of her final dreams before she woke up from her coma, she dreamed that her mother had died, Castillo said.
“I asked God if it was Him in one of my dreams and He said yes,” Castillo said.
“I woke up and a respiratory nurse was in there,” Castillo said. “I asked if my mom was dead and they told me she was fine.”
A part of the trend
Initially, Castillo’s lungs were filled with infection, and she is recuperating from that and her body’s inflammatory response to that, said Hetal Rana, one of her treating physicians.
Rana estimates that during that period when she was immobilized, Castillo lost between 25% and 33% of her body mass. But Rana described Castillo as a trooper, the type of person who reminds doctors of the reasons they went into medicine.
“She has a great positive spirit,” Rana said. “In a pandemic like this, it’s good to have a positive story.”
About the same time Castillo was infected with COVID-19, protesters gathered in cities and towns in Texas and nationwide to express their anger about orders to stay at home.
On April 18, hundreds gathered outside the state capitol in Austin, while others gathered in Nevada, Maryland, Indiana and Wisconsin, according to reporting from the New York Times.
Reports about younger people being struck with the disease were also beginning to emerge.
A CDC report released in mid-March said 508 people were hospitalized for COVID-19 in the U.S. and 38% were between 20 and 54 years old, according to information compiled by John Hopkins University. Half of those patients admitted to an intensive care unit were younger than 65, the John Hopkins article said.
Officials in Europe are noting the same trend, with reports that half of serious cases in France and the Netherlands are in people under age 50, the article said.
Recently released mobility data studies show signs that infections among younger COVID-19 patients may be easing, said Rajesh R. Nandy, with the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth.
Early in the pandemic studies showed that many of the patients were older and researchers detected patient clusters in Texas nursing homes, said Nandy, a biostatistics and epidemiology associate professor at the HSC school of public health.
Older people, who saw themselves as more vulnerable, adhered more closely to stay-at-home orders, social-distancing and mask-wearing recommendations. Mobility numbers dropped, Nandy said. Meanwhile, those who were younger were getting the message that they were not at a high risk to contract or become gravely ill from COVID-19.
As restrictions were loosened in April, researchers noted an increase in mobility, and that trend continued until mid-June, when the numbers became close to those seen during the initial rise of the pandemic, according to Nandy.
“Recently we have seen that mobility data drop again,” Nandy said. “My gut feeling is now that people are aware of the rising cases, I expect that people will modify their behavior based on the current data.”
But it is too early in the process to draw any conclusions from the available data, Nandy said. Researchers may be able to make more credible predictions about the disease trends in the next two weeks, Nandy said.
COVID may not kill you, but you may suffer
Castillo said she awakened from her drug-induced coma to watch these disease dynamics play out before her on the daily news.
Castillo said she has no idea where she may have contracted the disease. She worked as a bank teller and was exposed to people all day. It was still relatively early in the pandemic in Texas, when wearing face masks was a suggestion and not mandatory, Castillo said.
Many of the people who contract the disease while in their 20s do not need hospitalization, and most do not die, according to doctors. But others need extensive interventions, and a certain percentage of those who survive may suffer greatly, health care researchers say.
“Never, never did I think I would get this,” Castillo said. “I would see the news every day saying this many people have gotten it and this many people died. Maybe if I had just listened and wore a mask, I could have avoided all this.”
Watching stories about young people huddled together at bars and beaches without wearing masks really got to her, Castillo said. It was as though the people in those crowds gave no thought as to how their friends and families would feel if they got COVID-19 and it made them really ill, Castillo said.
It was as though they never considered how it might affect the life of a family member who might have to put their life on hold to help them recover from COVID, Castillo said.
“It’s something so simple,” Castillo said. “It’s not doing any harm to you to wear a mask. You can still breathe with a mask on. Why throw your life away? Of course you have your rights, but what about your family?“
Castillo also had a warning and a wish for those around her age.
“Take more precautions, because your life matters,” Castillo said. “If you get it, it may last for two weeks and you’ll be fine. But it may last longer. If you don’t do it for yourself, do it for those who are around you.”
