He got infected with the coronavirus disease while taking care of patients and was down for a week, but he is now back on duty to help critically ill patients fight Covid-19.
Elon Wameyo, a Kenyan nurse in Michigan State, is among medics whose dedication is driving up the number of recoveries from the virus to the one million-mark.
Mr Wameyo, 45, works as an ICU nurse at Sinai-Grace Hospital.
When he started sweating profusely, feeling dizzy and having weakness in his joints, he panicked and called his physician.
“Ordinarily, I would have gone to meet my doctor face to face for the check-up as we chat, but physical contact has become a thing of the past with the virus around,” he says.
Temperature was high
The doctor at Detroit Medical Center (DMC) asked him to immediately go for a check-up. It was April 8, and his body temperature was 39.6 degrees Celsius.
“My medical instinct forced me to start taking medication to bring down the temperature, which was too high,” says Wameyo. “It was likely I had contracted the virus.”
The following morning, he was holed up in his car in the now characteristic long queues of vehicles at the State Fair Park, which was converted into a coronavirus testing centre.
A medic came around and signalled him to roll down the window.
“He inserting a long cotton-tipped swab through my nostrils all the way to the nasal sinuses extracted and packed the sample,” he says. “It is a very excruciating and uncomfortable test.”
After five days, on April 14, David Williams, the medic who tested him, delivered the results.
“Presumptive positive for Covid-19,” states Dr Williams in his report posted on Wameyo’s patient medical portal.
“I did not panic. All along I knew that, like a soldier at the war frontline, a bullet could hit me,” says Wameyo. “A patient probably infected me.”
He explains that Sinai-Grace Hospital had literally turned into a battlefield, with medical workers fighting day and night to save Covid-19 patients.
The hospital, like many in the coronavirus hotspot US, which has more than 56,000 Covid-19-related deaths, stopped elective surgeries and converted ICU beds to serve Covid-19 cases alone.
“From when I tested, my boss allowed me to be off duty and when I told him I was positive, he gave me more off days to get medication,” he tells The Standard in a video call.
“I equally called my sister Amboka, who is in Canada, and broke the normal news to her,” he says. “She was speechless.”
Normal news?
“Yes, my brother, this thing (coronavirus) is normal up here. We are at the epicentre of it.”
He also broke the news to his daughter, Nicole Amboka, who is 17.
“She would prepare my favourite soup, package it and place it at the doorstep of my room and then leave,” he says. “After alerting me she had left, I would pick the meal, eat it and then return the utensils to the doorstep.”
Wameyo had maintained physical distance in the house immediately his temperature rose. He stayed in his bedroom while his daughter occupied the rest of the house. The two communicated through phone.
His family formed a WhatsApp group, The Wameyos, to check on their brother and encouraged him to fight on.
“I then continued with medication, which I started immediately my conscience told me I had the virus. I took Tylenol tablets and Gatorade fluid to replaces electrolytes because I was sweating a lot,” he says.
After about a week of medication, the son of Kenya’s late assistant minister and one of the earliest African gynaecologists, Elon Willis Wameyo, started feeling better.
He drove to Sinai-Grace Hospital for screening. “Phew, the result was negative.”
Wameyo broke the news of his recovery on his Facebook page: “It feels good to be back in these trenches with my fellow soldiers after testing positive .... I took some time off to rest, medicate myself and hydrate. It’s a horrible disease, but I beat it, and now let me help those who can’t help themselves.”
The nurse says he was not the only medical worker infected.
“A doctor and three nurses were also infected with the virus, treated and discharged,” he says. “We are now working with them after they recovered.”
Challenges
He encourages health workers in Kenya to work wholeheartedly.
“In the US, we also have challenges with protective gear. We repeat PPE overalls, a thing we were taught in school should be worn only once,” he says.
“I read somewhere on a Kenyan blog that health workers ran from a coronavirus patient. I hope that was not true. Let my brothers and sisters fight this flu from the heart.”
Wameyo holds a bachelor of education degree from Moi University, Eldoret. He graduated in 1995 and taught at Aga Khan High School, Mombasa, from 1996 to 1997.
He later moved to Tanzania and taught at St Mary’s International School in Dar es Salaam, before going to the US in 1999 where he switched to nursing after a short stint of teaching at Dr Martin Luther King Jr High School.
He studied at Oakland University, Michigan, from 2008 to 2012, and graduated with a bachelor’s of science degree in nursing after which he joined Sinai-Grace Hospital.
