Doctor hopes his scary COVID story will convince people to get vaccinated

HOLLYWOOD, Florida – As concern mounts over a rapid and steady jump in the number of COVID-19 patients being treated in the Memorial Health System, a prominent doctor shares his family’s frightening experience with the coronavirus.

Dr Daniel Chan, chief of orthopedic surgery and sports medicine for Memorial Healthcare in Broward County, said his entire family caught COVID in mid-December.

He tested positive just as the vaccines had just been rolled out to healthcare workers.

“My appointment for the vaccine was the same day I tested positive and had to retire from work and start quarantine,” Chan recalled. “Our 2-year-old daughter contracted it in her daycare and the daycare was closed. We haven’t given it much thought. At this point, we were very deep in the pandemic. I was going to work everyday and wear PPE and so far everything was fine so we figured it would be nothing.

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“We ended up with us, the whole family – my wife, my three children, our nanny – we all ended up testing positive. I had to quit work, the adults began to gradually get sick. It got to the point that we were having trouble breathing.

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His wife Eun Chan spent five days in the intensive care unit.

On Christmas Day, as Daniel Chan was on his way to Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital to have his three children (ages 8, 5 and 2) tested, he nearly collapsed in the emergency room and had to be taken from across the street in an intensive care unit.

He was in intensive care for 12 days, and with both parents hospitalized, a family friend was looking after the children.

“When we should have opened the presents,” said Chan, who had no pre-existing health issues.

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“Even after that my wife and I had quite a prolonged physical recovery,” he added. “It was definitely an eye-opening experience for the whole family. “

Chan tells her story to convince others to get vaccinated if they haven’t already.

“I think the vaccine has a good history,” he said. “With the current trends that we are seeing statewide with the Delta variant and the fact that the vast majority of people who get sick now are not vaccinated, I think this is very compelling evidence. I was in good health and was still able to contract and get very sick from COVID. Hopefully this helps sway some minds who are on the fence or maybe skeptical about the vaccine.

“In light of current events with the resurgence of COVID and its bias in favor of younger patients like me. I worked out in Orangetheory three times a week at 5 a.m. so I was probably one of the least susceptible people people would have assumed to have contracted COVID badly. So if we can convince people that vaccination is a good idea, that COVID is probably here to stay awhile … we really want to keep hospitals from being overrun again and everything shutting down again. “

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[ALSO SEE: Experts say vaccine hesitancy to blame as COVID numbers rise again in Miami-Dade, Broward]

Memorial Regional Chief Nurse Leslie Pollart points to a 125% increase in COVID-19 cases in their facilities since July 1, “and what is really concerning is that 98% of them are found in the unvaccinated community ”.

“The push was starting to wane, the numbers were starting to go down and this is a time when all the staff are tired of working so hard and they were all looking forward to family vacations, time off, a bit of a break,” he said. said Pollart. “And now it’s increasing again.

“Please get vaccinated. I know there is a lot of misinformation, please tell our doctor about it. While there is information that getting the vaccine may not completely prevent you from contracting COVID, we know it will prevent you from becoming seriously ill. “

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Pollart added that at this point, COVID patients are younger, with around 60% of them under the age of 60.

“This is a younger patient population and when they are not vaccinated the disease severity is higher,” she said. “Help our community to stay safe. Let’s make this surge subside so that we can all get back to somehow normal life. “

Hospital workers say it has been so long a fight on the front lines that there is angst in seeing so many people sick at a time when vaccine supplies are critical.

“It can be frustrating,” Pollart said. “Seeing people so sick and having a younger population and knowing about a simple vaccine could potentially get all of these people in the hospital.”

Chan said that “it adds insult to injury at this point,” especially for someone like him, who at one point feared his children would have to grow up without him.

And the increase in COVID cases may also have an effect on patients with other illnesses.

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“If the trends continue and we are forced to stop elective procedures or elective surgeries in the coming weeks, that means cancer patients will not be able to receive cancer treatments, it will be me who am weakened. with arthritis in the hip and knee cannot get their hip or knee replacement, ”Chan said. “As hospitals continue to be full, there may be people who are reluctant to go to the hospital and people who die at home of a heart attack because they do not want to be hospitalized, there are therefore has downstream effects on COVID which continues to linger. our community. “