Downeast families relate their struggles dealing with COVID

With cases of COVID-19 continuing to spike in Washington County since the beginning of the fall, the virus is affecting more and more families Downeast. A total of 240 new cases were reported in the county in the past two weeks, 38 people have died since the pandemic began, with 18 since November 1, and the county has seen a total of 2,655 reported cases. While many people with the illness may have mild symptoms, three Downeast families relate their experiences in which either their loved ones died from the disease or they endured a harrowing experience.

COVID hits family of three
Earlier this fall, a mother and her two daughters who are related to Brenda Foley of Lubec all came down with COVID, with one, her niece Bethany Preston, who was 36, succumbing to the virus. Foley's sister, Marilyn Preston, and her daughters, Melanie Bradford and Bethany, were all living together in Orrington, just south of Bangor. Bethany and Melanie had grown up in Lubec, before the family moved away when Bethany was in the seventh grade.
Foley relates, "Beth was a good kid. She worked all the time." She was a manager at Dunkin' Donuts in Newburgh and would work over 70 hours a week. Her mother Marilyn recalls, "Her boss said she was one of the best employees she had. She loved doing what she was doing. She was a wonderful person." Bethany also had a 4.0 average in her college courses for a business law degree that she was taking online through the University of Southern Maine.
"She was just right full of it. A sweetheart. She loved her family and was always busy working," her aunt remembers. "She was a workaholic."
Then on Thursday, September 16, the family of three tested positive for COVID. Marilyn and Melanie were in the hospital at Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center that Saturday, and Bethany went into the hospital on September 21. All three of them were placed on ventilators, and Melanie ended up having a tracheotomy. Foley notes that Bethany had asthma and had just been getting over pneumonia when she contracted COVID. She ended up dying less than two weeks later, on October 4, her father's birthday. He had died when she was six years old.
Melanie was released from the hospital on November 12 and Marilyn on November 19. Foley and her sister Roxanne, who lives in California, helped care for them at their home in Orrington and had gotten the house handicapped ready. "They needed a walkway and hand railings," Foley notes. "They were very, very weak."
"I'm very, very close with my nieces and sister. Always have been. My nieces stayed with me a lot when they were growing up." Foley adds, "They were the closest thing to a sister my son has. They were very close." Before Bethany was placed on a ventilator she gave her dog Razzle to Foley's son Justin, who lives in Lubec. "She loved movies and loved her dog. She was an avid reader," Foley says of Bethany. "She was crazy over her niece, Faith."
Bethany's mother Marilyn says, "She was my little rock. She helped me with everything."
Of the virus, Foley says, "I know it's serious. I worked on the ambulance for five years. I've seen all ages have it." She adds, "We're all going to get it, one way or the other."

'A horrific experience'
Jon Southern of Perry contracted COVID the first week of September, but he relates that pneumonia, not COVID, was what he had to fight the most.
He didn't develop a fever until day 9 and had not lost his sense of taste and smell. On the ninth day after contracting the virus, he says he "crashed. I couldn't stay conscious, and my breathing was shallow." He was taken by ambulance to the Down East Community Hospital in Machias, where he says he "didn't fare well."
"After day 10, all the bad stuff happened, and it was medication related." He was given antiviral medication and also a corticosteroid, dexamethasone, that ended up stopping the circulation in his feet. "It felt like my feet were on fire 24 hours a day. I started to get delirious. I didn't know the human body could feel that much pain. If I could have walked, I probably would have killed myself."
He spent three days in the hospital, then was home for four to five days, before returning for a day to the hospital. He took Aleve and was given Advil at the hospital, but he didn't want an opioid painkiller. "I was not mentally in a place where I felt I could control it," he says. "I've never been one for medication."
He notes that the U.S. Center for Disease Control states that anxiety is a significant cause of death related to COVID, which he had not believed. "But when I lay there in the hospital, the anxiety was so intense, I had a real struggle not to just give up. I can see now where anxiety is a real killer with COVID."
When he learned he had pneumonia, he panicked, as his father had died the previous year from pneumonia. "I was horrified. Pneumonia is quite an adversary even when you don't have COVID." The doctor at the hospital, though, told him to be more concerned about COVID, stating, "It doesn't look good for you." The nurses also were telling him that if he didn't stay on his side or front he was going to die. "It was just a horrific experience. I couldn't have created a more anxiety-ridden experience if I tried."
Because there were no available beds at the Machias hospital and no beds in other hospitals where he could be transferred, he ended up staying in the emergency room. "They had me on liquid oxygen. If I stayed on that, I knew I was just hours away from going on a ventilator," which he did not want to have happen.
He then told the doctor he was discharging himself from the hospital after his first three days, and though the doctor told him he had to stay for 10 days, Southern relates, "I said no, I'll die here."
He lost 60% to 70% of his vision, which he says is common with that level of constant pain, was losing his voice and was dehydrated. "I didn't know what caused this. I thought maybe it was long COVID." Finally he figured out it was the steroid he was on that had shut down his immune system, and he stopped taking it. His feet then started to recover and "five days of suicidal pain lifted." He says he lost 62 pounds in three weeks, because "I didn't eat a single thing."
Southern, who is 48 with no underlying health conditions, says, "I survived because I'm fit and healthy and active." He has also worked as a paramedic and says, "If I couldn't recognize what was going on in my body, I'm pretty confident I wouldn't be here today."
As for advice to others, Southern says that anyone with symptoms such as headaches and body pains should get tested immediately. While a fever is also often a symptom, he says that out of 24 of his friends who contracted COVID, only two had a fever at the beginning. He suggests that households should have a pulse oximeter, to measure blood oxygen levels, and that anyone with symptoms, even if they don't have health insurance, should seek help. "The worst thing you can do is not get medical help." And he advises one should "definitely get vaccinated," along with taking all of the health and safety precautions of mask wearing and social distancing to prevent getting COVID in the first place.

Always there for anybody
Larry Dinsmore of Lubec was just 42 when he passed away unexpectedly due to complications from COVID-19 on December 6. His mother, Colleen Dennison, who now lives in Ellsworth, says he was a hard worker and had been fishing since he was 16 with two of his brothers. Dinsmore's obituary notes that he was referred to by some as "The Hammer" and would spend countless hours fishing for lobsters, scallops, urchins or going clamming, working hard to provide for his family. "It was a real fishing family," says Dennison. He also loved spending time with his two daughters and granddaughter and grandson.
"He was a great kid -- very hard-working, loving his family and helping anybody who needed it," says Dennison. "He would always be there if anybody needed help with anything."
Dennison relates that Dinsmore contracted COVID just after Thanksgiving. He was sick for about two weeks but didn't want to go to the hospital. "He said he kept getting better." But then one morning, around 3 or 4 a.m., his daughter found him "just sitting there, looking strange." Her mother, Robbie Matthews, drove him over to the Machias hospital. "She called me in Ellsworth, and I went right down, but he passed before I got there," she relates. "He passed away so quick."
His brother had also contracted COVID before Dinsmore did and survived. "It's weird that one had it and turned out all right, and the other one just didn't make it."
As for advice, Dennison says one should seek medical attention if they have COVID and should take the illness seriously. "A lot don't take it as serious as they should," she says. "He had a lot of friends, and all of them are taking it more seriously now than they were."