In her role as the quality experience leader at Orillia Soldiers' Memorial Hospital (OSMH), Shelley Biscoe helped to train hospital staff how to deal with the dreaded coronavirus.
Little did she know then that she would become infected with the potentially deadly virus. But that is exactly what happened.
After battling an escalating fever — at home — for four days, she knew she had contracted COVID-19 and knew she had to get to the hospital.
Suddenly, she found herself in the intensive care unit, on a ventilator fighting for her life. At that time, her kidneys also stopped working.
"I had a consultation for dialysis," recalls Biscoe. "When vented patients gets dialysis, that's a big step backward."
Her daughter, Sarah Waltman, who had just begun working at OSMH as a nurse, remembers looking at her mom — a patient unable to breathe on her own — through the glass of the isolation unit.
At that point, Waltman's step-dad also had COVID and with her mom and uncle requiring a ventilator to breathe, she thought: What if both my parents die?
"It was very scary," says Waltman.
Fortunately, Biscoe "turned the corner" and did not require dialysis. She credits the stellar care and life-saving equipment at OSMH.
"When you don't have the energy or mind to breathe, the ventilator then takes over," says Biscoe, who knows first-hand the value of the device. "The ventilator is really what saved me and bought time for my body to fight the disease."
Even now, months later, she is still fighting. Biscoe estimates, physically, she is back to about 90 per cent of her pre-COVID health, but stresses nobody really knows what the long-term impact of the virus is on the body.
For Waltman, her mom's recovery is vindication of why she does what she does; she says she became a nurse because of her mom.
Knowing her mom was at OSMH, where the medical staff is first-rate, gave her "peace of mind (and) hope" during her mom's battle with the disease.
Biscoe credits the hospital and its staff for her recovery.
"Every day, I get a little stronger," she says. "The hospital saved my life."
