In the middle of Bill Plummer’s monthlong stay at Johns Hopkins Hospital, his family enjoyed a rarity for those with a loved one infected with the coronavirus: back-to-back days worth celebrating.
The first came nearly two weeks into Plummer’s time on a ventilator facing the effects of COVID-19, when the father of eight turned 56 while in a medically induced coma and his family sang him happy birthday as a nurse held the phone.
The next day brought better news: Plummer’s breathing improved to the point doctors planned to extubate and awaken him. They called his family.
“We’re all celebrating here,” they said. “You should be celebrating at home.”
The Plummers broke out a bottle of wine to rejoice. They were still enjoying it two hours later when they got another call.
The ventilator tube in Plummer’s throat left it swollen and he was unable to get sufficient oxygen. He needed to be reintubated.
But a day shy of a month since he first entered an intensive care unit, Plummer returned to his Potomac home and can count himself among the 2,298 Marylanders infected with the coronavirus who have been released from isolation.
“When we first got to hear his voice, I was shaking, crying,” said one of his daughters, Brogan. “The past [month has] just been a blur of just calling nurses and living our life just based on what time of day it is and when we can get an update.”
Jason Flanagan, 39 of Frederick, didn’t expect to be gone long when he left home about 3 p.m. to get a chest X-ray. By 9 p.m., he was in a medically induced coma at Frederick Memorial Hospital, being treated for the coronavirus.
Over those six hours, he texted his wife, Leslie, the occasional update. He was heading to the emergency room. He needed oxygen. They were going to intubate him for “maybe a day or two.”
He didn’t properly say goodbye.
“We didn’t have the kind of conversation, had it been the last one, that it would’ve been something to remember,” Flanagan said. “That was one of my biggest regrets."
Neither Plummer nor Flanagan knows how they got the virus, but Kabria Newkirk, 26 of Towson, believes she got it from a friend who visited her apartment while displaying symptoms. While trying to move out of that apartment, Newkirk was constantly winded, struggling to make it up and down the complex’s stairs or stand for long periods of time.
Two days later, she had no appetite as she faced a fever, chills and sweats. Within a week, she was in University of Maryland Baltimore Washington Medical Center’s ICU and on a ventilator after her oxygen levels cratered and her fever spiked.
“I was in the middle of moving just a couple days ago,” Newkirk said. “It didn’t make sense.”
Plummer and Flanagan were in comas by the time they got their test results. While none of the other seven members of Plummer’s household — Brogan, his five sons, and his wife, Megan — had any symptoms, Flanagan’s wife eventually tested positive and dealt with lesser versions of the same symptoms he had: fever, congestion and loss of taste.
“This stuff will sneak up on you,” Flanagan said. “I went for a week just having mild symptoms. I thought, ‘Yeah, OK, it’s fine, I’ll pull through it.’ And then in a matter of two days, it grew critical.”
Plummer remembers practically nothing about his time in medical care. While being transported from Bethesda’s Suburban Hospital to Hopkins, he lost his wallet.
Flanagan, though, recalls vivid dreams from his coma. He participated in a publicity event on an island. He researched an old murder case in Western Maryland. One place him in a Georgia hospital, where a nurse walked into his room and handed him a “Do Not Resuscitate” form.
Newkirk compared going under to being in a kaleidoscope. She recalls nothing from her two days on a ventilator, but the two days that followed were filled with hallucinogenic nightmares.
“I saw an entire game being played where people were racing for the cure, and whoever didn’t get to the cure first was going to die,” she said. “I believed all of it.”
Newkirk woke up desperate for water, with hospital staff wanting to avoid her swallowing improperly and getting a lung infection. A speech therapist cleared her to have three ice chips every other hour. When she was allowed to brush her teeth, Newkirk did so three times, just so she could rinse three times.
When Flanagan awoke, doctors and nurses had to convince him what he experienced was nothing more than realistic hallucinations. Plummer occasionally had to be restrained with large mitts as his mind spin.
“The things that apparently go through your head …” Plummer said. “Some of it’s downright funny. Some of it’s downright spooky. And some of it’s really dark.
"I'm pleased to have left that behind me."
They weren’t alone in having dark thoughts. Their families dealt with them, too.
“This was the first person I knew that was being intubated and on a ventilator,” Brogan Flanagan said. “When we heard the doctor just choking up when he called us, we realized, holy [crap], our dad’s in critical condition, and we don’t even know if he’s going to make it.”
Leslie Flanagan faced the same feelings regarding her husband. Infected with the coronavirus herself, she couldn’t leave the house or be with family.
“She’s by herself,” Jason Flanagan said, “trying to deal with, ‘Is my husband going to die?’ ”
Flanagan, an English teacher at High Point High School in Prince George’s County, was not only grateful for the care he received at Frederick Memorial, but also for the friends, family and even strangers who helped his wife. Family and others bought them groceries, set up an account with a meal delivery service and provided them with masks.
Flanagan’s nurses and doctors gave him a note that read, “Here’s to you — steadier, stronger, and better every day!” with messages of encouragement. Plummer said his caretakers at Hopkins left him “blown away.”
“You guys are heroes,” Newkirk said she told her medical team. “You show up every day and you know how bad this stuff can get and you still do your job.”
Flanagan returned home April 9 and no longer requires physical therapy or home care, though he lost 35 pounds in a little over two weeks.
He also learned he has diabetes, with doctors discovering an abnormally high blood sugar level. He figures that unknown underlying health condition is why the virus affected him so strongly.
“I wish I could’ve found out without almost dying, but at least now I know and it’s being managed,” Flanagan said. “Had I had the diabetes under control, maybe this wouldn’t have been so bad.”
Newkirk, a manager at Sprint, has asthma. Her sister, Teona Almonte, had the virus at the same time and was able to recover from home.
When she was released from the hospital after a two-week stay, Newkirk’s family greeted her with a sign that said, “I survived COVID-19.”
“I just burst into tears because I saw ‘survive’ right there,” she said. “That word just hit me really hard.”
Plummer, who does external affairs for global companies, said the virus has a humbling effect.
“As tempting as it may be to imagine you’re immortal, you’re not,” he said. “There's so much we have to learn, so until we've learned, we as a nation should take a very responsible approach to this. Don’t risk things for stupid reasons. Follow common rules. Understand that there's a cost to this, social and otherwise, but that the imperative is getting through this, and whatever stage comes next, alive."
With Maryland passing 1,500 confirmed deaths from the virus this week, Plummer, Newkirk and Flanagan are among the lucky ones who have had to adapt to stay-at-home mandates and social distancing orders upon their recoveries. That, Flanagan said, is preferred to the alternative.
“Anybody could get this disease and anybody can die from it,” he said. “No one needs to go through what I went through or what my wife and family went through.
“If we just have to deal with a couple months of isolation, that’s worth it rather than having to rebuild your lungs or, god forbid, have to bury someone.”