A mother of eight who has overcome the coronavirus is stepping forward to share her experience now that she has been declared COVID-19 free.
Charelle Gogue was diagnosed with COVID-19 and for three weeks she fought against the virus. She became so weak that she would sleep half the day just to ease the pain.
“I had fevers, chills, body pain. I couldn’t keep any food down I had chest pains, shortness of breath. Even just talking, I get short of breath so talking like this right now, I would already have to stop and do breathing techniques. It was so bad and I felt weak. If I stand up for a long time, like 2 minutes even, I would start to feel shaky. So I would sleep half the day just to try to ease my pain,” Gogue recalled.
She added: “I thought I was never going to get better because, like I said, it was three weeks of feeling that way. I just felt like nothing was helping and I wasn’t going to, you know, make it cause that’s how bad it was. I had no help, no medication other than Tylenol so I really thought I wasn’t going to get over it. I was scared every day,” she added.
But Gogue did get through it and on April 10 she was cleared by the Department of Public Health and Social Services and declared free of the coronavirus.
During the entire ordeal, however, she says that she’s disappointed in the home isolation monitoring by DPHSS, telling PNC that there was a point when she felt she would have to die before getting any attention from Public Health. She said the extent of DPHSS’s monitoring was limited to two phone calls a day, which offered no real enforcement of compliance with home isolation orders. No one came to her home or physically checked on her health.
“More needs to be done. At least you know some doctor or a nurse would come over at least twice every week to check your temperature, oxygen levels…stuff like that, knowing that it deals with your breathing and lungs and all of that. They should at least check, like I said, twice a week or something,” Gogue said.
Gogue says that through the clearance process, no information was provided to her regarding virus immunity. Now that she has been cleared, she says she is happy to feel like herself again, telling PNC that the virus drained her physically, mentally and emotionally. Having overcome COVID-19, she warns the community to not take the virus lightly.
“I just advise everybody to stay home and listen to health officials cause it really is something to be worried about. It’s a scary thing. I mean I suffered with it for three weeks and it’s no fun. It’s not like the regular flu, it’s worse. It really takes a toll on you,” Gogue said.
##
