What to do if you get the CV19 bug.

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The key reason people go to the hospital with COVID is difficulty in breathing. When my husband started to feel his breathing become more strained, he asked his doctor to order an oxygen tank that he could use at home. Many people may not realize that home oxygen is even a possibility, but it is prescribed for many conditions and there are companies that provide oxygen with systems meant to be used by non-medical professionals, delivered through simple tubes into the nose.

Along with the oxygen, we got an oximeter to measure oxygen saturation in the blood. It’s the little device they often clip onto your finger in a hospital. They’re available at some pharmacies, and we later learned that the oxygen company had a few as well. Having the ability to monitor oxygen levels at home was key to being able to gauge whether it was still safe to be at home and whether things were getting better or worse.

Another simple technique that is now being employed widely in hospitals, is that of sleeping prone, on one’s abdomen. Many hospitals are trying to keep COVID patients face-down for 16 hours a day, with them sitting up the other eight. That maximizes the lungs’ ability to work effectively, which is hard on one’s back. For my husband it was particularly uncomfortable because of a previous neck surgery, but by monitoring his oxygen saturation we could see how helpful it was.

When his oxygen was at 92 percent on his back, it jumped to 97 percent on his abdomen. We would have had to double his supplemental oxygen to get that kind of improvement. When he didn’t want to stay in that position, I used several strategies to keep him there.

I would put on a podcast he likes to listen to and challenge him to stay on his stomach until it was done. I gave him a back massage and used a technique I had learned as a nursing student to help clear the lungs of children with cystic fibrosis, hitting his back with cupped hands. It seemed to shake loose some of the secretions, and afterward his coughs were more productive. (KF: My chiropractor has done this for me for years when I got bronchitis or similar ills. Any respiratory therapist can do this as well.

) Even if the prone position is too uncomfortable to maintain, keep the patient off his back and on his side. If he is in a chair, keep it upright, not leaned back.

A spirometer was another great tool I wish we had started using earlier. It is essentially a plastic tube you suck into, lifting a gauge or ball to hit certain targets. It’s often used in therapy to improve lung function or in recovery from surgery. Somehow, being able to focus on how high he could raise that little blue ball was so much more effective than just saying “breathe deep,” and as Mark has been regaining lung capacity this has helped him dramatically reduce his supplemental oxygen.

Equally as important for increasing the expansion and efficiency of the lungs is focused deep-breathing exercise. Try lifting the arms up near the ears and breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. Do this in a slow and focused way — put your hand on your belly and feel it push out.

Almost any health program will tell you the importance of exercise and drinking lots of water. That goes double if you have COVID-19. COVID-19 sends microemboli (a small particle, often a blood clot) that can become caught in the bloodstream, damaging the heart, kidneys, and other organs. Water is important to prevent emboli and support kidney function.

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