Carson City woman shares her pursuit to get tested for coronavirus
Submitted by Carson Now Reader on Thu, 04/02/2020 - 11:29am
I am 66 years old and have underlying health conditions. In this time of pandemic, I contacted my doctor over the patient portal after suffering for four days with a fever, bad cough, sore throat, fatigue and myalgia.
I was advised to contact the Carson City health hotline. I did and a nurse called me back within 90 minutes to evaluate my symptoms. After discussing my symptoms with her, she advised me to either go to the ER or see if I could be seen by my doctor.
She advised me that I would not be able to be tested for coronavirus at an urgent care as they had no tests available. She stated that she thought I would be tested for the flu or strep throat first and if those were negative, I would be then tested for coronavirus.
I then went to the ER. After a chest x-ray that was luckily clear, I was told by the doctor that although I definitely had a virus, I could not be tested for coronavirus as they only had enough tests to use on patients that would be hospitalized. After receiving a breathing treatment, I was released to go home to self isolate.
I was told that they could not rule out that I had coronavirus so I should monitor my oxygen levels and return if they fell further.
I certainly appreciate the difficult jobs that the doctors, nurses and public health have during this trying time. I am just frustrated, as they must be, that I came in unnecessarily and possibly exposed people to a virus when there was no chance for a test and there is no real treatment.
My only reason for going to the ER at that point was to hopefully be able to determine whether I had the virus or not, as I knew that although I was feeling very poorly, I was sure that I did not need to be admitted.
The lesson I would like to pass on, is that contrary to reports from some news outlets, there is still a severe shortage of tests and in the meantime we must all hunker down and just act like we are presumptively positive.
Certainly, if you have severe shortness of breath or a very high temperature you need to be seen as soon as possible, but in these times I guess we all have to make the difficult decision as to when it’s time to seek help. However until we are told otherwise we cannot depend on getting tested in an outpatient setting.
I would again like to thank all of the heroic hospital and medical workers that are on the front lines of this battle.
