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NORTH FORK, NY — A nurse who contracted the coronavirus and spent two months in the hospital fighting for her life went home into the arms of her thankful family Thursday.
“I was terrified,” Doreen Williams, 48, said on the ordeal.
Williams grew up in Riverhead and now lives in Center Moriches. She was working at Peconic Landing in Greenport as a per diem employee and at Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead as a dialysis nurse in March when her world turned upside down.
While she does not know how she got the coronavirus, Williams said she believes she may have been exposed at work. In the hospital, Williams was comatose and suffered three strokes, kidney failure and seizures. Doctors told her that they “almost lost her” twice. She learned that a former patient that she had cared for died from COVID-19.
Williams said she knew something was wrong when she began running a fever that spiked as high at 104 degrees. She became sick in March, before stringent social distancing protocols had been put in place, she said.
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When she first became sick and found out that she would have to be intubated, she said: “I was terrified. I was scared.” Her niece, who is a physician’s assistant, advised her that a ventilator was her best option. “I told her, ‘I trust you with my life, but I’m 48 years old. Why do I have to go on the ventilator? There has to be another way.'”
There wasn’t — and Williams was intubated for 33 long days. She doesn’t remember much of the following weeks, but she does remember, before she was intubated, telling her daughter Cherish Brown what to do if faced with the unthinkable. “I just had this feeling,” she said. “I gave her instructions on what to do if something happened to me.”
Cherish described the nightmare of not knowing if her mother would live: “It was the worst feeling in the world,” she said. “My mom was preparing me because she didn’t know if she was going to make it. She said, ‘This is it.'”
Her mother, she said, couldn’t breathe. When she got to the hospital, she FaceTimed with Cherish. “Then I didn’t speak to her for 33 days,” Cherish said. “My mom and I are best friends. Going from talking to her every single day to not talking to her for 33 days, I was beyond crushed.”
Her mother, she said, is also close to her sons Jonathan, 9, and William, 1, as well as her other grandson Elijah, 11.
‘I didn’t know what I was going to do without my mom’
The weeks were filled with uncertainty, Cherish said. “The doctor told me they almost lost her twice. It was horrible. In the beginning, people were saying that many don’t make it off the ventilator. But my mother — she pulled through.”
Describing her mother’s strokes and seizures, of her struggle to learn how to walk again and use her arm, Cherish said all that matter is that she is home. “It is such a relief,” she said. “I didn’t know what I was going to do without my mom.”
Family friend Wendy Lechner, Cherish said, helped her through, focusing on the positive. “She knew it was hard for me, very hard,” she said.
‘I feel like Wonder Woman’
When she woke up after her coma, Williams said: “I lost two months of my life in the hospital, from March 27 to May 28. To know that I survived it? I feel like Wonder Woman.”
First brought to Long Island Community Hospital, Williams was eventually a patient at Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead, the town where she grew up. The doctors and nurses there, she said, fought hard for her, “one of their own.” Nurses brought her their personal phones so she could FaceTime with her daughter and son Rasaun.
CNAs Dani Foskey and Kelly Schuhmann, she said, “took care of me like I was a baby. These people were so good to me.”
As grateful as she is to have survived, Williams said her journey with coronavirus hasn’t been easy.
“It was horrible,” she said. “To wake up and have someone tell you have been on a ventilator for 33 days — and to be a nurse and know what that means? I was crying when I woke up. I couldn’t sleep for weeks. The worst part of if was because it was COVID-19, your family couldn’t even come visit.”
Her children, her grandson, and her husband came to the window at the hospital to wave to her through the glass, she said.
The physical challenges, Williams said, were daunting: “I woke up and my left hand didn’t work. I started screaming,” she said. She is currently undergoing occupational therapy and will need to continue for at least 180 days, she said. “I can’t pick up a glass. My hand is stiff and in a lot of pain. I can’t put my pants on,” she said.
As a nurse for more than 20 years, Williams said: “I didn’t expect that I would ever get sick. My job is to help people.” As a dialysis nurse, she said, she has found her niche. Having a patient who has been receiving dialysis receive a kidney, she said, is the greatest feeling in the world.
“That’s my purpose in life,” Williams said. “To help people.”
Now, however, the tables have turned. Williams herself has had to undergo dialysis several times. She is dependent upon her husband Carlton and her daughter Cherish to help her get dressed, even to take her pills, something she finds difficult to accept. “They have to do my pills for me!” she said. “I’m a nurse!”
After her COVID-19 experience the anxiety is so severe that she will be getting a therapy dog, Jack, this weekend. “I have PTSD now,” she said. “My anxiety is through the roof.”
But, not one to dwell on the negative, Williams said, “Let me tell you about the good things.”
When she finally left the hospital Thursday, hospital staff held a “clap out” for her, Williams said. “I was able to see my daughter and give her a hug. She is my best friend.”
She was also able to see her grandson, Williams said, and hug her husband. “Just to be able to touch my family was everything,” she said.
And not just that, but Riverhead Police gave her a police escort home; Williams has family members that work for the town and the police department and members of the department showed up in a fierce show of support and love.
While at first the police wanted to drive Williams home to Moriches, she asked, instead, to go to her mother’s house.
“My mother took this very hard. She is elderly,” William said. “When I was in the hospital, she didn’t want to answer the phone. She lost a lot of weight. So I said to the officers, ‘Can we please go to my mother’s house?’ The hug I received from my mom, when she told me how much she loved me, was priceless.”
With her trademark invincible spirit, Williams is not using a walker or a cane. “When I tell you that God is awesome, I mean it — He’s so good to me. I’m just ecstatic.”
Her whole life has changed since she was diagnosed with coronavirus, Williams said.
“My doctor told me, ‘Doreen, God has given you a second chance at life. You use this second chance wisely,'” she said.
Williams said she can’t wait to get back to work. “I’m a nurse. I’m always going to be a nurse. It’s in my blood. It’s what I am,” she said.
She added: “I was never depressed. I always looked at this as an opportunity. When that doctor told me they almost lost me twice, I knew this was a second opportunity for me.”
While she still cries every day after the experience, Williams said she is “so thankful and happy. I really believe I am a better person now.”
The things that used to upset her, such as keeping her house up to her “Type A” standards, no longer matter, she said. “I have bigger fish to fry,” she laughed.
What matters now, she said, are family and friends. “I have just received so much love,” William said. “And I so appreciate it. I am just so thankful.”
A GoFundMe has been organized by Williams’ niece Casi Kozerski.
“We are all so proud of her for her strength and persistence to begin healing again,” she said. “There are many who didn’t make it from this virus, but she kept pushing! But, while she was under, her bills piled up and now, while she is recovering, while she is in therapy to relearn the basics of movement . . she has to worry about how she will pay her bills.”
She added: “My family and I love her and want her to continue focusing on healing so that she can have a normal life again. This fundraiser will help her not only financially, but mentally and spiritually, as well.”