We were alone at home. I felt that sitting at home I was useless, so I started to go on a crusade to find personal protective equipment for people at the hospital. It became a hustling game. I put something on social media and see if people would do good for us. I received a reply, about an exterminator who might have some protective equipment, and I followed the lead and he said, “I don’t have N95 masks, but I have hazmat suits.” And I said, “Send me those.” And then he knew another guy who had a couple of boxes of N95s, and I had them shipped to the hospital, care of the executive director.

I was ready to be called in to help. Unfortunately that hasn’t happened, because I got sick.

On Wednesday night, March 25, I woke in the middle of the night with wicked heartburn. I hadn’t overeaten. I just woke up with heartburn. I hiccupped for four hours and had bad indigestion. The next morning I woke up and was really tired, and my G.I. was a little off. I must have cleared my throat about 800 times in an hour. Then it just hit. I went upstairs, because I was very, very sick: body aches, headache, fever, off-and-on sweating and chills, and the G.I. symptoms continued. For two days all these symptoms persisted, and I also had nausea and vomiting. In the back of my mind, though, I thought, I don’t have any respiratory symptoms; I don’t have a cough or shortness of breath.

By March 28, I suspected Covid. I knew people who had it, medical colleagues who I trusted, and they were a little ahead of me in the disease. They were saying that on Day 5 I would have respiratory problems. Sure enough, on Day 5 I started having shortness of breath. Around the same time, all the flulike symptoms got a little better, and I thought, OK, I am going to get better. But then I started not being able to get deep breaths.

I’m 47. I wrestled in college; I’m still fit and consider myself strong. I know what going anaerobic is like, and this was different. I am a surgeon and speak in public. I had never had a panic attack in my life. And I was having trouble breathing. I wondered if it was a panic attack. The chest-wall rigidity would last four hours at a time. In those hours, I would not know what to do. I was scared. I was scared that I was going to die.

I had to shut off social media and stop taking calls. The bad news was too much for me; I could not take harrowing statistics and bad news, the virus had played on my mind. I wanted positivity. Here I am, supposed to be a tough guy, and I turned into a wimp. That lasted for at least a couple of days, and I only had a moderate case of this disease. There are people going through 10 or 20 times worse.