A respiratory therapist and father of five beat the coronavirus and got back to work in New York City, helping others.
Raeburn Fairweather, 47, returned to work last week at Brooklyn’s Maimonides Medical Center, where he inserts and removes ventilator tubes from patients’ tracheas, after spending two weeks fighting off the coronavirus himself.
“The Tylenol would not bring it down. My body felt like it was falling apart,” Fairweather told the New York Post of his 104-degree fever. “Headaches were immense. They were making my eyeballs feel like they were on springs.”
Fairweather said he was tested on March 18 after symptoms appeared following working three shifts. He said staff at the hospital didn’t take many precautions during the early days of the outbreak.
“I’m going to be honest with you, the staff was still somewhat laid back about it,” he said, adding that “the ones that were not suspected, we did not wear protective gear.”
After quarantining himself in his home away from his wife and 11-year-old child, he managed to beat the virus and get back to work. He warned, however, “If your body cannot fight, you will not make it. It wears your body down.”
More than 8,400 people have died in America as a result of the coronavirus, and at least 311,536 people have tested positive across the country and U.S. territories.
