A Colorado nurse is giving a detailed account of her experience with coronavirus because she said it’s “nothing like I expected.”
Lisa Merck told KDVR that she tested positive after returning from a three-week vacation in Hawaii where she attended a medical conference with her husband.
She wasn’t worried initially because she said her symptoms started out with “sniffles,” but they quickly progressed into something straight out of a nightmare.
“We were on buses, trains -- we were on planes having fun,” Merck said. “We went to a medical conference over there and on the day we were going to leave, I had little sniffles. That’s it.”
She said during the plane ride, she began to feel body aches, but chalked it up to a cold or flu.
“We got back and my muscles ached, my bones ached and my joints ached really bad,” Merck said from isolation in Crested Butte home.. “It felt like someone was stabbing me with an ice pick and I was like, ‘I wonder if I have the flu.'”
When she called the CDC and her local department of public health, they told her she didn’t meet the criteria for coronavirus testing.
But instead of getting better with some rest, Merck’s condition began to worsen.
“I felt really short of breath, I felt very fatigued,” she told the outlet. “Finally, on Sunday night, I told my husband, ‘I need you take me to the ER. I don’t feel well — whenever I stand, I feel like I’m going to faint.’”
Doctors first told her she had viral pneumonia, but tests eventually came back positive for novel virus.
Merck is now recovering and feeling a lot better, but she remains in quarantine and won’t return to public life until she’s cleared by two separate tests and presents as asymptomatic.
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