Health & Fitness
Douglasville Woman Shows Coronavirus Signs, Family Feels Stress
A Douglasville woman feels coronavirus stress: Her mother is sick, her relatives are NYC healthcare workers and a family friend died of it.
DOUGLASVILLE, GA — With the coronavirus spreading across Georgia, Ruth Hampton is feeling the stress. Not only is she dealing with cabin fever, two children at home and relatives who are healthcare workers near a pandemic hotspot in New York, her 54-year-old mother checked into the hospital last week with COVID-19 symptoms.
“They don’t have the results (of the test) yet, but she has all the signs,” Hampton said Monday.
The first sign for Dunie Mentor, Hampton’s mother, was a complete loss of appetite last week. Next came a fever that eventually rose to 103, followed by labored breathing. Finally, an ambulance last Thursday took Mentor to Wellstar Douglas Hospital’s intensive care unit.
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Mentor is still in the hospital but out of the ICU, in part because of the efforts of Dr. Joel Ransom, who Hampton praised as going “above and beyond.” On Sunday, Mentor even ate her first meal in a week — but she’s hardly ready to go home. “She loses her breath just getting up to go to the bathroom,” Hampton said.
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Hampton moved to Douglasville three years ago from Long Island, where three of her aunts — one doctor, two nurses — are healthcare professionals who already are seeing the coronavirus crisis up close. Worse yet, a friend of Hampton’s husband who lives in the New York borough of Queens died recently of the coronavirus. He was in his early 40s with no underlying health conditions.
“We’re better off here, but we’re worried,” Hampton said.
Hampton’s 5-year-old daughter Mylah dealt with the situation by creating a giant chalk thank-you message on the family driveway for Ransom and the rest of Wellstar’s staff. After all, it’s better to have gratitude than attitude. “I think at times (the kids) get sick of us too, so when the attitude comes out, I let it go,” Hampton said. “Since this all started, they haven’t seen any other human life but us.”
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