A horror show monster.

Those are the only words Jacksonville resident Life Dean can find to give form to the series of mental, physical and spiritual traumas he endured after falling prey to the COVID-19 virus several weeks ago.

A retired Marine who travels internationally as a motivational speaker, the 43-year-old said his symptoms began with a sore throat and progressed to a fever that spiked to 104 degrees. Growing progressively weaker, Dean’s wife, Tammie, insisted that he seek medical help on Saturday, April 4.

"I couldn't remember how to breathe, so my wife took me to the emergency room," explained Dean matter-of-factly.

If COVID-19 is a monster, said Dean, it’s one with many, very distinct faces. After being treated at the emergency room at Naval Medical Center Camp Lejeune he was admitted to the hospital. Several days later, Tammie also tested positive for the coronavirus. Her symptoms, he said, were very different from his own.

"The COVID I had and the COVID she had were almost two polar opposite things," he explained. "She coughed and threw up and had some tough nights, but never had a fever or sore throat. She had to get it from me because she doesn't go anywhere. So we had the same COVID, but totally different symptoms and situations."

Dean said the situation he found himself in made it clear that COVID-19 is a very different beast than the common flu. After being admitted to the hospital, he was diagnosed with the virus on Sunday, April 5. His condition would grow dire over the next week. Dean was eventually intubated and placed on a feeding tube and catheter as doctors worked to save him from a virus that currently has no vaccine.

A health conscious, "sturdy" man who suffers from no underlying health conditions, Dean said the virus broke him down in ways he never thought possible.

"It attacks you physically, mentally and spiritually. It has a smell, it has a scent and it literally beats you into a different type of position because when you think you’re fighting it off for your body it starts attacking your thought process," he said. "I literally forgot how to breathe, I literally couldn't remember how to inhale and exhale. I felt like if I closed my eyes the whole world starts spinning and I thought if I went to sleep it’s going to kill me."

Dean said he entered a space where the choices were starkly clear: fight or die.

"It’s attacking you on so many levels. You think it’s fighting your body and it starts fighting your mind, and the moment that you lose your mind death seems like a viable option. So if you don’t keep a positive mind-state it’s probably going to kill you," he explained.

Tammie described the experience of being separated from her husband, even as she self-quarantined to avoid the couple’s children, as "really tough."

"Only because I couldn’t see him and I could only do phone calls through the doctors and nurses. And then I couldn't come out of my room either, so it was lonely," she said. "It definitely messes with you psychologically. Most of my anxiety came from just not knowing what was going to happen."

After a full week in the hospital, Dean had improved enough to be taken off intubation. Two days later, on April 14, he was released and returned home to his family.

Dean says he has no idea how he contracted COVID-19. As a speaker he travels across the country and had recently been in Los Angeles. He did his best, he stressed, to follow the current health guidelines, washing his hands and wearing facemasks.

"I say it’s like being in the kitchen trying to cook chicken wearing all black and trying to keep flour off of you. It’s just not going to work," he noted.

Dean said he hopes his story will help others grasp the true gravity of the threat from COVID-19.

"People need to understand the importance of social distancing and making sure you're taking care of your family and yourself. This is serious, this thing is a monster," he stated.

During the darkest hours of his hospital quarantine, Dean said he drew strength from two things: his faith and his family.

"First God, secondly just my responsibility to live. I felt like if I laid down it was going to give everybody the okay to do that and not fight for their life. I looked at my granddaughter and things that I promised her, just looking at my family and saying, ‘Okay, I have to be aware of my responsibilities just to humanity itself.’"

"I was the only person in the whole hospital that had it and whatever happens to me is going to be to the benefit or the detriment of whoever comes behind me," he added.

Dean also praised the work of the medical staff at Naval Medical Center Camp Lejeune.

"The finest professionals in the world," he remarked. "There came a point where I started telling them ‘You’ve got a family to go home to, don't die trying to take care of me.’ Every time they came in the room with me they had to throw all of their PPE gear away when they walked out. They had to come in that room and wipe my behind and they did it with no hesitation. They kept my spirits up."

Dean said the experience has made him hyper aware of his family's day to day activities.

"Just being very cautious and mindful and making sure we’re not making any unnecessary trips. If you don't need to go outside the house don’t go out, if you don't absolutely need it. It’s not ‘Oh, I want some cheese for the hamburger so I’m going to go get some.’ That’s not worth your life, and that’s how you have to think about it," he said.

As a black man raising a family, Dean shared his thoughts on data that shows that COVID-19 has hit the African American community particularly hard. In addition to poverty issues he blamed the high infection and mortality numbers on a mistrust of traditional media.

"I think a lot of time culturally and community wise we don't trust the news, because with most of it you don't get the good picture, you get the other side. So it comes from a place in your mind where if it’s not on Facebook it’s not even the news to you," he commented. "Because I can watch the same thing on FOX and CNN and they’re going to give you different lenses based on what’s important to the people who watch those stations."

Asked if he had advice for anyone experiencing COVID-19 symptoms, Dean said they should seek medical help immediately.

"Make all the noise you can make until you can get into a hospital. Thank God I have my wife here because I was just sitting in my house, and if you’re just sitting there trying to work it through and trying to machismo it out you’ll end up laying in the middle of your floor dead," he said. "One minute you’re cool and the next minute you’re asking somebody how to breathe."