Waterford – MaryLou Gannotti, who is slowly emerging from a bout of COVID-19, wants people to know that the disease can ambush you without warning, even if you’re a health shot.
If there ever was a healthy family it would be the Gannottis. MaryLou described herself, husband Greg, 56, and her two sons, Jake, 19, and Luke, 14, as ‘a family of fitness enthusiasts’ who participate in – and in Greg’s case, coach – wrestling and enjoying outdoor activities, including paddleboarding.
But at the end of December 2020, all four came up with COVID-19.
MaryLou also wants people to know “that it takes a meeting that can last a second, 30 minutes, or an hour, but if you think you’re safe with that very good friend, you very well may not be.”
How it happened
The Gannottis suspect they contracted COVID-19 from a friend of Greg’s because they spent some time together. MaryLou said her son started clearing his throat almost immediately after Christmas, although he was not coughing. This seemed a bit strange, but she didn’t think much about it.
Then, on December 28, MaryLou rose to work at Coastal Connecticut Research, a medical clinic in New London. She said she felt fatigued upon waking but attributed this feeling to being the mother of the family and having recently ended the vacation. ‘I’m the one who cooks, cleans, shops. So I said, “You know what, I just got wiped out.” I thought I might have had the blues because I didn’t get to see my mom or other family members over Christmas. “
When MaryLou was at work that Monday, she received a text from Greg.
“He told me that his friend’s husband tested positive for COVID-19. He said, “We’re all being tested,” and I thought to myself, “Don’t tell me that the frog in my kid’s throat is COVID,” MaryLou said.
She then told her boss, who sent her home and closed the facility for three days. All of her colleagues tested negative. Greg and Luke found out they had tested positive on Wednesday of that week; MaryLou and Jake, on Thursdays. None of them really thought they were sick until they got the positive results.
MaryLou harbored some disbelief; her family was healthy and followed every protocol. This is a family of fighters, and they would be okay, she decided. She felt encouraged when, during those first few days after a positive test, the symptoms weren’t overwhelming.
“At first I thought to myself: I can cruise through this, this is just like your basic cold. Well guess what, I was wrong, ”she said. “Within days my lungs were so damaged. We took our (temperatures) every day, none of us ever had anything above 98.6 (degrees), but I ended up having chills, I had some physical pain, I had a headache. The biggest struggle for me was my breathing: I felt like there was a stone on my chest. And I felt like someone had a rope around my lungs, and they kept pulling the rope. “
Her sons and husband were not that sick. She lost her taste and smell; not her. Jake had the mildest case. Luke felt a tightness in his chest, but as MaryLou said, he’s 14 and she’s 50, “so he’s more resilient than I am.” Greg had what sounded like a wet cough, while MaryLou had a hard time coughing at all – “It was just pain. And oppression. “
According to her own confession, she should have gone to the hospital to take advantage of supplemental breathing, as told by a nurse from her doctor’s office after the ordeal.
“My concern as a mother and wife is: what happens if I leave my family? I almost felt like if I go, I won’t come back, “she said.” I am a lifelong Catholic. They say that sometimes the voice in your head is the voice of God, and the voice said to me, ‘Stay home. You’re gonna make it. “I didn’t know I needed supplemental oxygen, but by the grace of God I made it. “
While MaryLou said she has some lingering issues, she and the rest of her family were evicted around January 7-9.
“I’ve had the flu before, bronchitis before, I’ve had illnesses that knocked me down, but then I get up again. This is not yours, you stay in bed for three days and then get up again, ”she said. “This is yours, stay in bed for nine days, start getting up again, and then you fall back on your keester. I don’t exercise as much as I used to, I’m trying to rebuild my lungs, I went for a walk again with my dog, who started tearing the house apart. I think if you go into this with good health, it helps recovery, but it certainly didn’t make the virus any easier. It still divides and overcomes. “
COVID cocktail
The Gannottis tried a litany of remedies while recovering with varying degrees of success. MaryLou said on Facebook that she was short of breath and asked how she could ease that. A friend of hers, who is an occupational therapist and has worked with COVID-19 patients, told her to sit on her stomach. Another friend said to practice yoga breathing.
MaryLou continued her own research on YouTube where she found a doctor featured on the BBC who described a breathing technique and also recommended spending time on your stomach.
‘My friend said you should spend at least two hours on your stomach every day. Don’t sleep on your back, don’t lie on your back, ”MaryLou said. “I’ve had everyone in this house do ‘tummy time’. At that point, I almost felt like I could only sleep. I slept up to 12-15 hours a day. I had no energy, but I knew the only way to get through this was to sleep and shut out the outside world. I didn’t want anyone to share grim statistics with me. “
Another friend of MaryLou’s, who is a nurse, told her that she had to take a certain amount of baby aspirin every day because people are more prone to blood clots with COVID-19. MaryLou eventually started a regimen she calls “the COVID cocktail” of vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc and vitamin B12. A naturopath told her she should also start taking black cumin oil.
“While this was happening, I just wanted to survive. I knew I could live or die. I knew the statistics of this disease, I also knew I wanted to live, ”she said. “I’m not saying people who died didn’t have a will to live, but I knew I wanted to get out of this.”
Patrick Cahill, a physician at Backus Hospital, described how devastating COVID-19 can be for a family that all lives under the same roof.
“Usually, by the time the first person knows they have it, they’ve already passed it on to the rest of the household,” he said. “The highest period of transmission risk is the two days or so before the onset of symptoms. By the time someone is symptomatic, people often try to talk themselves out of the reality that this is COVID. They’ll say this is a cold, they might wait a few days, and then they might get tested if it gets worse, and at that point, probably everyone they live with has been exposed. “
Cahill confirmed that the healthier a person is when dealing with the virus, the better the chances of a speedy recovery. He also said he understood MaryLou’s decision not to go to hospital.
“It’s completely understandable and it’s nothing anyone should ever blame themselves, especially if they are generally in a great state of health,” Cahill said. “What I’m trying to tell people about shortly after they’re diagnosed, something that would probably help a lot, is see if they can buy a pulse oximeter or borrow one from a friend to check their oxygen levels. “
He also advised people to get vaccinated as soon as possible and to watch out in case they fall into an eligible group.
While people look for alternative methods of treating COVID-19, Cahill recommends seeing their doctor. And he said self-proning, or lying on your stomach, is one of the strategies “we tell everyone to do in the hospital because that’s a very easy and non-invasive, non-toxic method to improve the results. “
The kindness of others
While the time she spent indoors struggling with her health was grim for MaryLou, she said the people who contacted her were “angels” and helped her through the ordeal significantly. The friendliness of strangers even saved a birthday.
In addition to catching the coronavirus for the entire family over the holidays, it also happened to fall on Luke’s birthday on January 2 and MaryLou’s 50th on January 12.
“January is already a bad month for birthdays, but do you want to talk about the worst birthday month ever?” MaryLou said. ‘But we’ll get out. I went to church last Sunday and a friend said to me, “It’s good to see you,” and I said to her, “It’s good to be seen.” ”
On Luke’s birthday, the family had ordered groceries from Walmart, including a cake. But the cake was not there. Greg contacted the delivery man, but Walmart wouldn’t let her return the cake, so she grabbed one for the family and left it outside the door.
‘My husband gave her a big tip to cover the costs. A stranger we didn’t know pulled money out of her own pocket and delivered a birthday cake. Things like that, ”MaryLou said through tears,“ that suffocates me because they say that Jesus presents himself when people do things like that. We didn’t even know this woman, but she knew our order was messed up, and she went to pick out a birthday cake for our kids because we couldn’t. “
Hope and family
MaryLou cited a striking piece of family history: her great-grandmother, Carmina DiBiasio, died of the flu in Italy in 1919, during a new global pandemic.
“She was 32 years old when she died, leaving behind my grandfather Andrea, his brother Tommasso and sisters Concettina and Caterina,” she said. My grandfather was about to turn eleven when she died, and he was the eldest of her four children. He emigrated to the US when he was 16, largely due to his bad stepmother. ‘
The Gannottis are the ultimate cautionary tale in MaryLou’s eyes. She said the coronavirus is insidious – it can catch anyone at any time.
Still, MaryLou said she wants to give people hope.
“There is hope in kindness, there is hope in compassion, the wonderful things that people prayed for us, sent us messages, my brothers came to see me, my sister, my mother, my aunt,” she said. ‘I had cousins praying for us. We appreciate the people who prayed for us. I don’t want to sound evangelical, but it makes a difference. “