Phoebe vs. COVID: Survivor recounts ‘long journey,’ losses, recovery

ALBANY — On March 11, 2020, Laconyea Lynn didn’t feel right.

Employed as a care provider for an elderly couple, one of whom had cancer, Lynn usually sat down to eat with them at the table. That day, her intuition told her to break that routine.

“Something kept telling me,” said Lynn, who was 49 at the time. “That particular day, something kept telling me to stay away, keep your distance.”

A few days earlier, while helping out in the kitchen at her church, Lynn had felt drained.

“I was too tired to pick up two eggs and crack them,” she said. “I don’t know how I actually got COVID, who I got it from.”

Later, on March 11, still feeling unwell, Lynn, who said she is not a sickly person, went into a Phoebe urgent care facility. After tests showed her blood oxygen saturation was only 68% (less than 90 is not good), medical personnel immediately wheeled her over to the nearby hospital in a wheelchair because there was no equipment available on site to give her oxygen.

After that, a lot is fuzzy. When she arrived at the hospital, she was placed next to one of her church members, who was herself being administered oxygen.

“When they found a bed for me, they put me in a room,” Lynn said. “I kind of don’t remember much after that. … I remember them saying my mom was coming in.

“That was a Tuesday. My mom came in on Thursday.”

For the next six weeks or so Lynn was in and (mostly) out of consciousness. Medical personnel placed a tracheostomy tube down her throat to provide oxygen. Each time she came out of her “sleep,” they put her under again.

At some point, she insisted that her mother, Brenda Lynn, be placed in the same room with her. Lynn and her mother had lived in a house for several years in the Putney community and were close.

“I felt the need to be in the same room,” she said. “Something in me just told me she wasn’t going to fight. From that point, I don’t remember much.

“For six weeks, I was sleeping. Every time I came to, they put me back to sleep. I was hearing them; I was seeing them. I saw the lady with the red hair who turned out to be my nurse.”

Although her time of unconsciousness was much shorter, as was the case with Rip Van Winkle during his 20-year sleep, much happened while she had been kept in a medical coma.

Fast forward to April 24, and Lynn picked up the narrative of what happened.

“I was on a ventilator,” she said. “I had a feeding tube. I had three IV posts in my right arm. I had all kinds of bedsores and wounds from where I could not be moved. They tried to turn me as best they could. I guess they’d had to do dialysis to keep my kidneys working. I couldn’t talk.”

Her son, who had been by her side much of the time, filled her in on some things. He had been asked whether the family wished to remove her from the ventilator when her prognosis was not good. Her father, Ackie Lynn, told his grandson, Victor Hilson, to say no.

Two weeks after that, against the advice of medical personnel, Victor broke the news that Lynn already knew in her heart: Her mother had succumbed during the period she had been kept unconscious.

“Mother died March 17, 2020, two days after her birthday,” Lynn said. “God showed me her death in my sleep, in a dream. He prepared me for that while I was sleeping. The day my son came there to tell me, he was crying. I said, ‘You don’t have to tell me, I already know. Mom is gone.’ That was something I needed to know.

“He was a trooper through it all, but once I got home he fell apart, and I understand that. He cried and he cried, and I understand. He thought he was going to lose both of us.”

Having been wheeled into the hospital and wheeled out of the facility, when it came time to finally leave on May 20, Lynn insisted on walking on her own, despite her weakened condition.

“I told them I wanted to walk to my car,” she said. “I wasn’t rolling out of here in a wheelchair. Everybody came out and saw me off to go home.”

During her recovery, Lynn got to become familiar with some of those who had cared for her. They told her they had been praying for her, as had her church family.

Most were traveling nurses, she said, as she is familiar with many local medical personnel. She still communicates regularly with Kim Sloan, who was one of those who was by her side during the worst.

“Whenever I opened my eyes, she was there,” Lynn said. “I kept going back and forth between the two hospitals (Phoebe Main and North). They were all my angels. That’s what I call them.

“All I can say is I am thankful and I am grateful.”

After her release, Lynn was initially on oxygen. Her voice has changed, due to having the tube down her throat, but she has no serious long-term effects from her illness.

“My body is still gaining strength in my legs,” she said. “I can only stand for so long before my lower back starts hurting. My body went through a lot of changes because of all the medicine they had to give me. I lost a lot of hair. I had retained 70 pounds of water weight at this time last year. That was a side effect.”

There also was the mental toll and another loss. Four days after her release from the hospital, her father died of cancer. He was buried in a graveside ceremony at a time when funeral sizes were limited and held outdoors only due to the pandemic.

“Every Christmas Eve we would be at my dad’s house, and it was like that forever,” Lynn said. “There were a lot of firsts. Every first was hard.

“It’s just … being out here, it’s quiet and peaceful. Sometimes, I have my moments. My mom and I moved out here in 2014. I miss her. I miss both of my parents. I have to go on. I’ve never been one to sit around and be miserable. It’s been a long journey.”

Since she has had some time to recover, Lynn has been asked to speak to a number of groups.

Even though the COVID-19 threat has receded, she said she urges people to take reasonable precautions to avoid catching, and prevent them spreading, the disease.

“The message was please cover up and protect yourself,” she said. “If you don’t want to protect yourself, think about others. Every family was affected. I would ask you to mask up, be aware and protect yourself and others.”

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