‘It really wipes you out’

Debra Gnemi is exhausted more than she has ever been in her life.
Since last week when she became hospitalized, Gnemi has been on oxygen 24/7 with a plastic tube sticking in her nose and receiving steroid treatments. She was diagnosed with COVID-19 on Sept. 21.
“It really wipes you out,” Gnemi said from her hospital bed late last week. She is the wife of Steele County Commissioner Rick Gnemi. She expected to be in the hospital for at least five days with hopes of getting out on Tuesday after this edition went to press.
Gnemi, 65, went into the emergency room three or four times with nausea, headaches, fever and an overall feeling of being tired. “The fever just goes on for days and days and days and days and days,” she said. She describes the fever as a roller coaster where it comes and goes. She has found it to be “very erratic.”
“It’s very, very debilitating. It really does a number on you. There is no way to describe this,” Gnemi said.
Finally, on Oct. 1, she was admitted to the hospital when her oxygen levels started dropping.
While in the hospital, Gnemi undergoes an infusion once a day. She receives a shot in her stomach to keep her blood from clogging. The steroid medication is used to keep her lungs open. Doctors have been watching her kidneys and liver closely for possible side effects. She is on bed rest, but doctors don’t want her laying down all the time.
Gnemi is in an emotional prison of sorts. She is in a room by herself, and she can’t have any visitors. The nurses are suited up “just like you see on TV,” she said. 
And the ordeal is playing mind games on Gnemi.
“You feel all kinds of things. You’re anxious and wondering how many people you gave it to without knowing,” she says. “When you get sick, you immediately wonder who you gave it to because you don’t want anybody to get sick.”
On Friday, she was hospitalized and couldn’t see Rick on his 69th birthday.
She has been helping her husband with his campaign to get re-elected to the county board. Gnemi also runs the office for the couple’s appraisal business. “Everything comes to a screeching halt,” she said. 
Gnemi has taken on a whole new appreciation for the medical staff left to deal with the pandemic and care for COVID patients. “I don’t think people realize the danger they put themselves in every day,” she said.
Further complicating things is that nobody really knows much about COVID. “It’s very hard for the medical community to give you answers because they are in the dark just like anybody else,” Gnemi says. “You can tell they feel helpless.”
She shared frustration over how some people react to COVID. Out of respect to people, she said her husband wore a mask while campaigning. Some were very put off by him wearing a mask. “We are living in very dangerous times right now,” Gnemi said.
Gnemi isn’t certain where she picked up COVID, but believes it may have resulted from getting together with a group of women at Hy-Vee on Sept. 15. They got together wearing their masks and practicing social distancing. The daughter of one of her friends in the group had been home and later tested positive for COVID.
“I don’t know if I was exposed by her daughter,” Gnemi related. “I could have been exposed by someone else. You just don’t know. It’s very strange,” she added.
For now Gnemi is focused on her recovery, though she has no idea how long that may take. She has learned some people get over it in one week while others are dealing with it for 30-40 days. “COVID is one of those weird things,” she said.
During this scary time, Gnemi has been thinking about her family, especially her three grandchildren, who are without a father after he died of brain cancer at 37 years old. Her grandchildren are 14, 11 and 9.
“I’m asking God if it's his will to get me through this and see my grandchildren again,” Gnemi said. “You realize how little control you have in your life. This life we have here is temporary. It’s in God’s hands. He knows what he is going and you have to trust him.”
After what she has been through over the past couple weeks, Gnemi has one piece of advice.
“Don’t let anyone tell you this is a plain garden-variety flu because it’s not,” she said.