California, US: A 43-year-old male nurse shared a picture on social media last weak showing what COVID-19 did to his body after a nearly two-month stay at the hospital.
“I wanted to show it can happen to anyone,” Mike Schultz told BuzzFeed News after posting his before-and-after photo that showed him 50 pounds lighter than one month before he was admitted into hospital. “It doesn’t matter if you’re young or old, have preexisting conditions or not. It can affect you.”
Mike is from San Francisco and has no underlying health issues. He used to work out almost every day prior to falling ill, but after a six-week-period in a Boston hospital with COVID-19, he said he’d dropped from 190 pounds to 140.
He said he felt exhaustion just by standing up for a few minutes to take a selfie and the capacity of his lungs was also severely hindered.
“I was so weak. This was one of the most frustrating parts,” he said. “I couldn’t hold my cellphone; it was so heavy. I couldn’t type, because my hands shook so much.”
Mike had also totally lost his sense of time.
“I thought only a week had gone by,” he said of his sixth week in bed.
Mike went to Boston in March to visit his partner.
One week prior, they had traveled to Miami Beach for a festival where a number of at least 38 people tested positive and three men lost their lives to the virus.
“We knew it was out there,” Mike said. “There were no real restrictions in place, though. No lockdowns. We just thought, Well, we gotta wash our hands more and be wary of touching our face.”
In a matter of days after arriving in Boston, he had a fever of 103 degrees and his lungs were full of liquid.
He was brought to the hospital, intubated for over one month and his partner, who stayed in touch with him through FaceTime as much as possible, said it was “pretty much like he was in a coma.”
After he left the hospital last week, Mike said he got criticized because he attended the Miami festival, but he would rather focus on his recovery.
“I knew what I thought going in,” he recalled. “I didn’t think it was as serious as it was until after things started happening. I thought I was young enough for it not to affect me, and I know a lot of people think that.”
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