Tacoma nurse credits remdesivir for helping in husband’s coronavirus battle
Apr 29, 2020, 5:46 PM
Tammy and Brian Edwards are avid Seahawks fans. (Photo courtesy of Tammy Edwards)
(Photo courtesy of Tammy Edwards)
Last Friday, we introduced you to Tammy Edwards. She’s a nurse in Tacoma who has been recovering from coronavirus at home while her husband has been on a ventilator in the hospital. She joined the Gee and Ursula Show for an update.
“There’s some improvement,” she said. “He’s still not able to respond, but they’ve lowered the sedation to a point where … if I asked him to open his eyes, he’ll open him. He’ll look at the phone, and I asked him last night to blink if he loves me and he gave me butterfly kisses.”
“Small improvements. He still critical and quite ill but things are taking a positive turn,” she added.
Dr. Anthony Fauci says remdesivir, an experimental drug originally used to fight Ebola, will likely become the standard of care for COVID-19 patients. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is working now with the manufacturer to green-light the drug for widespread use. Tammy said this drug has played a part in her husband’s treatment.
Local nurse recovers from COVID-19 while her husband fights to stay alive
“Hydroxychloroquine — when they did give that to him the first day, his blood pressure tanked, they had to get a crash cart available and didn’t need to use it. But they took him off of it,” she said. “Then he got a dose of actemra, followed by the next day he got a plasma transfusion, then the remdesivir was started up again.”
“He’s been on that, and today will be his sixth injection of [remdesivir]. So, yes, I believe those are the keys to helping him get through this.”
Plasma from COVID-19 survivors may help patients fighting the virus
Based on her personal experience, she believes we need to be as patient as possible when considering reopening.
“I think that we need to have this broad testing to be able to track, and then we can reopen our economy safely at a slow pace. We need to open our economy back up, but we can’t be negligent.”
Listen to the Gee and Ursula Show weekday mornings from 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.
