An Ohio mother is warning any skeptics doubting the seriousness of coronavirus to think again — saying the “brutal” bug quickly took over her body without warning.
Amy Driscoll, 48, of Hudson, shared her experience with COVID-19 in a detailed Facebook post on Saturday, just hours after being released from a hospital.
“I am the face of this infection,” Driscoll wrote, using her maiden name of Brock. “It is brutal and I’m a healthy 48 year old [sic] with no underlying conditions … Please take this seriously. People you love, their lives may depend on it.”
Driscoll, a mother of four, said she first started feeling “run down and feverish” on Wednesday afternoon with a headache, a cough and a fever that reached 99.2 degrees before she fell asleep.
Driscoll then awoke at 3 a.m. Thursday with difficulty breathing, prompting her to drive herself to a hospital after being told by emergency room staffers to first call the state’s Department of Health coronavirus hotline, she recalled.
“It’s a good thing I did,” she continued. “My [blood pressure] was very low and my heart rate was very high. These are not good signs on top of fever and cough.”
Medical staff gave Driscoll “every test they could think of” and kept her Thursday in an isolation unit, which was a “horrible” experience, she told the Plain Dealer.
“It was lonely, it was disorienting,” Driscoll told the newspaper while thanking nurses for their devoted care. “Every time they came in my room they risked exposure to the virus. I just can’t thank them enough.”
It’s unclear where Driscoll picked up the virus, but she went to a Cleveland Cavaliers game on March 7 and her ex-husband recently traveled to Germany, the newspaper reports.
She now remains in self-quarantine with her son — though they are staying away from one another within their home.
“If I’m upstairs, he’s in the basement,” she told the newspaper. “If he comes up, I move to another room.”
Health officials in Summit County announced Sunday that an unidentified woman in her 40s had been confirmed as the county’s second coronavirus case.
“The patient had no known travel associated risk or known exposure to someone infected with the virus,” health officials said in a statement. “Therefore, this is most likely the result of spread of the virus in our community.”
Driscoll, meanwhile, is one of 36 people across Ohio who had been diagnosed as of Sunday, the Akron Beacon Journal reports. She’s continuing to recover, but is still fighting through fatigue and headaches, she told the newspaper.
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“Just like my body has been through a battle,” Driscoll said.




