RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - State Treasurer Dale Folwell was jolted awake at 3:30 a.m. on Tuesday, March 31, in a Winston-Salem hospital bed where he was being treated for COVID-19.
Lying there, struggling to get his blood oxygen level where it needed to be, a movie scene flashed into his mind.
“I was reminded of that famous quote from ‘Shawshank Redemption’: ‘It’s time to get on living or you get on dying.’”
Folwell, 61, had tested positive for the virus about a week earlier. Then his blood oxygen levels crashed. Even the oxygen doctors gave him couldn’t bring his numbers back up.
“Things quickly became intense,” Folwell said, retelling his two weeks with the virus through deep coughs that sounded so intense you can almost feel the pain yourself.
His coronavirus diagnosis was confirmed on March 23, days after visiting his doctor for what he thought was a seasonal allergy. He had no idea anything was wrong.
A TRIP TO UTAH
Two weeks earlier, Folwell was on a trip he had planned with his son to the “hinterlands of Utah.” He cut the trip short when he learned that because of the coronavirus, “the market had become volatile.” It was plummeting by record amounts.
Folwell had no cell phone reception in Utah so he spent a day-and-a-half on a landline trying to work with his staff from across the country.
Then he took a direct flight home and went to work in Raleigh, where he thinks he picked up the virus.
“No one on the trip got it or had any symptoms,” Folwell said.
He said he never had a fever or shortness of breath. His only sign that something was wrong was a cough, but it’s Easter season, which for Folwell also means allergy season.
“I was signing up to give blood, that’s how good I felt,” Folwell said.
HIS BLOOD-OXYGEN LEVEL DROPPED
He stayed at his house in Winston-Salem after learning about his illness. But on Sunday, March 29, his doctor ordered him to go to the hospital when a pulse-oxygen test showed that his oxygen levels had fallen below normal levels.
His family was forced to drop him off at a hospital door where he was whisked away by doctors.
“Things got very intense between noon on Sunday and 4 a.m. Tuesday,” Folwell said.
It was that jolt in the middle of the night, when he began to think over his life. Folwell said many important moments of his life had happened within 1,000 yards of his hospital bed at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.
His childhood rental house was right next to the hospital’s helipad. He served as the hospital’s paperboy and ate all his meals there.
“All my struggles as an adolescent growing up were within 1,000 yards of where I was laying,” Folwell said.
A doctor came in and interrupted his thoughts.
“He said, ‘I need your priority to be focused on your breathing and nothing else,’” Folwell said.
‘A WAR … INSIDE MY LUNGS’
As he learned from his days racing motorcycles, Folwell said he took in every breath like he was smelling roses and exhaled every breath like he was blowing out 61 candles on a birthday cake.
“There was a war going on inside my lungs between the virus and my immune system,” Folwell said.
Folwell said he also focused on his wife and the messages she would send him.
“It was just a reminder that all that is really important is that you have someone to love and somebody that loves you,” Folwell said. “That you have something to do every day and something to look forward to.”
Folwell fought to keep breathing.
Five days later, he was released.
Folwell said he never stopped working with his staff to keep the office running.
“You should know I’m not the first treasurer to get sick, and we have standard operating procedures in place for when that happens,” Folwell said.
Folwell immediately went back to work after his release. The Health Department has cleared him of COVID-19, and his doctor plans to write a final note clearing him of the virus in the next day or so.
Folwell said nothing about the disease changed him. But he took away from his illness that his job “is to advocate for the invisible, like the doctors, nurses and teachers.”
“There are a lot of invisible people who pulled me through this, that held my hand, prayed for me, attended to me,” Folwell said. “That didn’t change anything, but it cemented what I already knew to be true and that is the impact average folks make on our society that make it all work.”
Please read our comment policy before commenting.