CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – New Year’s Day 2021 was something to look forward to after a pandemic and a string of other crises making a mess of 2020. Joanna Vest was ready for a new start herself, until she got sick on Dec. 28.
“I had sweats, I was shaking, I had a mild fever,” Vest said. “I had chills, I was freezing.”
Vest, who was just recovering from the flu a week before, said this felt different. She tested for COVID-19, and the first test came back negative. However, the next day the symptoms got much worse. “I was coughing up blood, spitting up blood, I didn’t eat, I just laid down.”
Two days later, she went to the hospital and was diagnosed with pneumonia. She was sent home with antibiotics, but still she found no relief.
First pneumonia, now COVID
At around 5 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, Vest took a turn for the worse.
“My husband said, ‘Baby, you need to get up.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to get up.’ He pulled the blankets off my legs, and my legs were blue.” They had a blood oxygen detector, and her level was in the 70s – normal is 95 to 100 percent. They decided to go to the emergency room.
“I told him, ‘I don’t want to go; people die at the hospital.'”
Vest knew of people who had died from COVID-19 after being dropped off at the hospital, never to be seen by their loved ones again, and as she watched her husband drop her off, that’s all she could think of. “They had got hit with COVID, and were gone in two days.”
When she was dropped off, her official oxygen level was at 72 percent. The doctors told her if she hadn’t come that night, she wouldn’t have seen New Year’s Day.
She was put on oxygen, and they did scans on her chest. “I had smoker’s lungs, and I don’t smoke,” she said.
They also noticed a few masses in her chest, but Vest chalked it up to swollen lymph nodes.
“It took me down so quick. I had COVID, I had pneumonia, I had a blood clot in my right lung, my blood pressure kept rising and dropping, and I was in the hospital for about seven days.”
Pneumonia, then COVID, now cancer
Vest thought the worst was over, but her husband and three daughters had gotten sick as well. Once home, her trouble breathing and coughing didn’t let up, and she pushed herself to help her family.
Two days later, she was put back in the hospital.
“My oxygen dropped again, I felt like I was having a heart attack,” Vest said. She stayed a day in the hospital, and the whole family was released from quarantine on Feb. 1.
Although Vest was still weak, she went back to work, and things were slowly getting better, or so she thought. She went back to the hospital for scans and tests on her birthday, Feb. 25, to check on the progress of the masses. She received a call that night that one of the masses, located between her heart and lungs, had gotten bigger.
“They said it was the size of a pencil tip when they found it, and it grew to the size of a walnut.” They told her they thought it might be cancer, and that they were going to send her to a surgeon to have it removed.
“This can’t happen, I just turned 35. I don’t understand,” she said of her reaction. “I work with babies, I have three teenagers, I have a daughter going to college, this can’t be real. I just went through COVID and that almost took me, and then you’re trying to tell me I have this thing – I was like, no.”
Pneumonia, COVID, cancer, now MG
A few days later, Vest got the diagnosis: Myasthenia gravis, also known as MG, which is a rare, incurable disease that shuts down parts of the body involuntarily. She was told it was lying dormant until she had COVID-19.
On April 17, the doctors removed the mass, confirmed to be stage 1 cancer, but after surgery, Vest went into an MG crisis. She woke up paralyzed and was rushed to the ICU. They put her on a respirator and a feeding tube. She was unable to talk and barely able to move, but she recalls the kindness of the nurses looking after her who would come in and touch her hand, and speak to her even when she couldn’t respond.
“Having touch from other people was amazing, I was so lonely because I couldn’t talk and I couldn’t move.”
She was released from the hospital on April 25. and was announced cancer-free on April 27.
“If it wasn’t for COVID, I wouldn’t be here,” Vest said. “I could’ve got (MG) at an older age, and I would have brushed it off.”
Vest said this experience has made her more aware of taking care of herself, and it has made her more grateful for each day.
“It’s affected my whole family. It almost took my life, it also gave me my life,” Vest said, “I just hope that others are being safe and they are looking at the signs and thinking about their parents or maybe their friends. Just be more compassionate about the people around you.”
June is Myasthenia gravis awareness month. To learn more about Myasthenia gravis, click here. To learn more about COVID-19, how you can protect yourself and others, follow Clarksville Now’s coverage.