ER doctor and Yahoo News Medical Contributor says contracting the coronavirus was 'pretty scary'
Like many healthcare providers, Yahoo News Medical Contributor Dr. Dara Kass is on the frontlines fighting to keep other people alive while putting themselves at tremendous risk. The Yahoo News Medical Contributor slows down long enough to share with Yahoo Life moments of her day-to-day after surviving the coronavirus.
Video Transcript
DARA KASS: For the past two months, I basically have been doing all coronavirus all the time. And a little bit after this pandemic started in New York City, I actually got the coronavirus myself.
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The one word I can use to describe what it's like to find out that you have the coronavirus for those patients, I think including doctors, is it's actually pretty scary. I was having muscle aches, fatigue, a little bit of a headache. I had lost taste, which I thought was weird. And I spent the next five to six days at home kind of realizing how contagious. I was, making sure I didn't give the virus to my husband, making sure I was breathing OK, taking Tylenol. I used an inhaler for shortness of breath. I checked my oxygen level with a finger pulse ox. And I just monitored my symptoms, making sure that I could stay home safely.
About three weeks after my symptoms started, I got back to work in the ER, and I really waited until I felt comfortable that I wasn't actively going to infect anybody else.
Right now, my kids are downstairs. They are doing school, on Zoom for the most part. I'll visit them a couple times during the day and see them and see how they're doing and check in.
My husband's next door. So we have this office. I have one here, and he has one next to me. I think it all just feels a little strange.
Homeschooling's hard. I think that this whole virus has thrown a lot of our regular plans and our regular schedules into disarray.
So first homeschool is learning about-- what are you learning about?
- Eagles.
DARA KASS: And how is it?
- Good.
DARA KASS: Yeah? Is it hard or is it easy? Apparently gets very easy.
- I have way too much work. I think by the time I'm done, it's going to be dinnertime.
DARA KASS: So now we're sitting down to dinner for the night. It's probably 7 o'clock New York time. We are-- the one thing I will say from the coronavirus and the pandemic and the quarantine is that it's the first time ever that we've had dinner together as a family basically every night. Michael Kass, husband, how do you feel about family dinners?
MICHAEL KASS: I think that they're very loud. They're very loud, and I get interrupted a lot. That's all.
DARA KASS: What do we do when we go outside?
- Mask, six feet apart.
DARA KASS:
MICHAEL KASS: Masks and six feet apart. And do you think that makes it--
- Or if you're not wearing a mask, at least 10 feet apart.
DARA KASS: Do you think the coronavirus is, like, very scary? Do you-- does it make you feel like you are scared to go outside? Does it make you feel like you're scared to see your friends? Like, what do you think?
- Well, OK. It makes me, like, kind of scared but not really scared because I know that if I, like, protect myself and stand six feet away from people and I wear my mask at all times and I'm not, like, touching anything or anything or I'm not too close, then I know that I'm, like, more likely to not get sick.
DARA KASS: After I had coronavirus, I developed antibodies to the virus, which has been really helpful. And so I've been trying to participate in any of the studies around us in New York City that allow us to donate specimens to contribute to the plasma studies. So now I'm going to NYU, which is a hospital near us in Brooklyn, to submit a specimen and donate plasma or at least see if I'm qualified.
OK, here we are. We're donating plasma. So doctors are really good at donating blood. I don't want to gore anybody out, but I will tell you that we are very good at this. So we don't flinch. It's actually already in. I'm happy to show you all the blood if you want to see it. I don't think you're ready for it. Woo! Hopefully that, to somebody, is liquid gold.
The message I want to get out now as we head into what seems to be like the next phase of this virus is that you need to think about what's happening in your local community. You need to find a local website that tells you how to find your own testing. It needs to be something that tells you real-time occupancy of your hospitals, understand if your ICU beds are open, and really figure out is your community ready to start engaging with itself again?
We need to advocate for ourselves and for our families and for our neighbors and for our communities, and I'm hoping that that's what we have when this is over, a real sense of community and sustainability and I hope maybe a new and better normal as the silver lining in this entire experience.
