By Julia Caulfield
Morgan Smith and his wife, Sarah Lavender Smith
Morgan Smith isn’t the kind of person you may expect to be hit by COVID-19.
“I’m 53. I’m in good shape. It’s often hard to qualify that answer because my wife is an ultra-runner, and she runs hundred mile races. So in comparison to that, I’m like a couch potato,” said Smith, “but I love hiking throughout all the mountains here. I don’t smoke, I don’t have diabetes, I don’t have any of the risk factors that would be considered serious.”
But in March month, Smith found himself on oxygen at Montrose Memorial Hospital after a CT scan showed he had viral pneumonia in both of his lungs and symptoms for coronavirus.
“My wife had to say goodbye in the driveway without coming inside because of the exposure risk, and I stayed there for two days for observation to make sure the oxygen was helping and I wasn’t going to need anything more serious or go to the ICU,” said Smith.
Smith’s experience with COVID-19 began earlier in the month, after picking his son up from college.
“They had called to say that it was time to come and get everyone and bring them home,” said Smith.
According to Smith, his son showed mild symptoms of coronavirus, a slight cough. Then his wife and daughter ended up with low fevers.
But for him, he didn’t have a fever at all – at least at the beginning. There was a slight cough, and fatigue.
“I had a day where I basically stayed in bed all day. I woke up, had breakfast, fell back asleep, woke up for lunch, and fell back asleep, and then woke up for dinner and slept all night, which was highly unusual. But I didn’t feel bad,” said Smith.
After a few days, the symptoms got worse.
Smith said,“I started experiencing really bad aches and pains all throughout my body. My skin hurt to touch at all.”
He was still having a hard time getting out of bed.
“I was having something that was almost similar to hallucinations in that I was by no means sleeping for 24 hours, so I’d be awake for hours on end, but in my mind, what was going on was very similar to dreaming,” said Smith.
It culminated at the end of March. Smith’s wife woke him in the middle of the night. His breathing was rapid, and he had a 103-degree fever. She told him he needed to get to the Telluride Medical Center.
Smith said,“I didn’t want to. I was saying ‘let’s just wait until later, I don’t want to do that now”. It turns out when I got there, my blood-oxygen level was down at 74. What was happening was I was not making rational decisions in any way whatsoever.”
The Med Center tested him for COVID-19, although the positive test result would take several days to return. Medical providers took that CT scan which showed viral pneumonia and put him on oxygen. From there Smith headed to Montrose.
At the hospital, he was in a room by himself.
“They left me there with all of my thoughts. You start having those thoughts like this may be it,” said Smith, “This may be the last memory that I have in this sterile room where I don’t get to see anyone that I know ever again.”
Around 1 a.m. Smith’s oxygen levels started dropping again – even while he was on an oxygen machine.
“It was terrifying, honestly terrifying, because I knew what the results of that could mean. I could mean that my lungs were in fact in the process of failing, and if that’s true that meant I had to go on a ventilator of which I knew there was only a 20% chance of ever coming off of,” said Smith.
Ask Smith about the incident now, and he’ll say in retrospect, it had a funny ending. As it turns out, Smith says his nose was congested, blocking the oxygen from getting to his lungs. A quick rinse of saline and all was well. But that doesn’t change the real fear in the moment.
“I was basically in a position of thinking the absolute worst,” said Smith, “of I might be in a position where I never see my family again.”
Smith was released from the hospital the following morning, and he’s making a full recovery. But he says the experience shifted the way he sees the preventative measures of sheltering in place and staying at home.
“Now that I know how serious it is, and I understand what would happen if a whole lot of people got to the level that I was at the same time; what we are doing as a country is the most import thing we could possibly be doing,” said Smith.
Smith is one of 13 in San Miguel County to test positive for COVID-19 so far. The county’s stay at home orders are in effect until midnight on May 1st.