At 23, recovering coronavirus patient warns others his age in KC: ‘It’s not a joke’
He got out of the SUV front passenger seat slowly, right foot first, then the left.
And when that second foot hit the pavement in the parking lot of Menorah Medical Center, cheers and applause enveloped Shakell Avery. He lifted his arms into the air and waved both hands.
“Looking good,” someone shouted from the crowd of doctors, nurses and hospital employees watching from the socially distant safety of the sidewalk.
“You look great,” someone else yelled.
This was Avery’s early Independence Day celebration.
After nearly 80 days of fighting COVID-19, sedated, flat on his back with a ventilator tube pushing air down his throat and into his lungs, then a stint in rehab, Avery is walking and standing again, though a bit shaky and leaning on a walker for support.
He is only 23.
“For everybody that’s out here taking a chance, I’m here to tell you that it’s not a joke, it’s not a game,” Avery said to a crowd of media and supporters Tuesday night. “It’s definitely not something you want to go through. So, people that are … ‘Well, I don’t want to wear my mask and I don’t want to do this and do that,’ that’s fine. But think about the others that you are hurting.
“You are taking somebody away from their family, from their son, from their mom, and their dad. So take it serious.”
When Avery got sick in April, most people suffering the worst and dying from this new coronavirus were way older. But that script has now flipped as America watches the virus infect growing numbers of younger adults in their 20s and 30s.
He was one of the first COVID-19 patients in the Kansas City region to be treated with convalescent plasma, full of antibodies that doctors hoped would help his ravaged body fight off the virus. He did not, according to one of his doctors, have underlying health conditions.
On April 6, Avery arrived, as he put it, “dazed and confused” and scared for his life in Menorah’s emergency room in Overland Park. He left rehab last week and returned to the hospital with his family to say thank you.
It was the first time that nurse Sara Stremel, who took care of him, actually heard his voice. At one point, she and his team of caregivers had no hope that they would see him speak, much less do it standing before a crowd.
“So him being here and being surrounded by all his family is just a really beautiful thing,” said Stremel.
‘Safer for everyone if people wore masks’
Avery used a few brief moments in front of TV microphones — the hospital promised his mother he would only have to stand for five minutes — to warn that COVID-19 is real and is nothing to be messed with.
Avery’s son, who will be 2 in August, almost lost his daddy.
His mother, Willetta Avery, almost lost her firstborn.
When she took her own turn in front of the microphones, Willetta Avery was blunt.
“I feel like, even Shakell, I don’t think he took it serious at first. But as a young person, you feel like you’re exempt from things like this,” she said. “But none of us are exempt to this virus. I would just ask people to please wear your mask and try to be as safe as possible.”
After weeks in bed, Avery was sent to a rehab center before he could go home to Independence.
“Even for a patient in their 20s, the amount of weakness that they have from being in a bed on sedation for weeks is tremendous,” said Dr. Marjorie Wongskhaluang, an infectious disease specialist at Research Medical Center who worked on his case.
“They don’t just get out of bed and walk. You have to relearn how to walk again, you need a lot of exercising of your arms to feed yourself. He has the advantage of his age, but he still had to go through tremendous rehab.”
Most people in their 20s and 30s are “going to do fine from COVID-19,” Wongskhaluang, said. “Most of them don’t even end up in the hospital.
“But what they need to think about is the people that are more vulnerable around them — parents, grandparents, co-workers. Even if they have somebody in their same age group, they may not know of the medical problems for that person. so that can make them a higher risk if they were to be infected.”
Social distancing is hard for everyone, she said, but it’s important.
And wearing masks? “It’s a must,” the doctor said, and she is “definitely not” happy with what she sees around Kansas City.
Kansas City and Jackson and Wyandotte counties now require masks in public. The state of Kansas will require them starting Friday — but individual counties can opt out. And in all those jurisdictions, enforcement may be spotty.
“I would like it to be where everybody’s wearing masks when we’re going to the store. I think people would feel much more comfortable if everyone was wearing a mask,” she said. “Obviously you still need to take other precautions. But it would make it safer for everyone if people wore masks. I definitely have not been impressed with the amount of mask wearing around us right now, unfortunately.”
‘Quite pleased with the results’
Jessica Knox, who was Avery’s night nurse during most of his stay, was almost too tearful to talk about her former patient. The day he opened his eyes, she called his uncle in Ohio and proclaimed, “Oh my God, he’s awake!”
“That’s something I will remember for the rest of my life,” Knox said.
In April it took a team at Research, collaborating with colleagues at Menorah, more than three weeks of hustle, phone calls and creative use of connections within the vast HCA Healthcare system to find the plasma to treat Avery.
Ultimately, the plasma came from a recovered COVID-19 patient in New York City, with assists from the Community Blood Center of Kansas City, Missouri, and the American Red Cross.
The treatment, like the virus itself, was novel then but has become a go-to since then.
“The theory is patients who have been previously exposed to COVID, most of them will have mounted a sufficient immune response, and part of that immune response is the production of antibodies,” Dr. Joe Restivo, medical director of transfusion medicine at Research, explained in April after Avery received his transfusion.
The theory appears to be working. Avery was treated as part of a project led by the Mayo Clinic. He was the first of more than 20 patients in Kansas City whom Restivo and Wongskhaluang have treated with convalescent plasma.
They’ve seen “promising results,” meaning the patients have been discharged from the hospital, Wongskhaluang said.
“I think it kind of turned out how I expected it to be, which is good,” she said. “I’ve been quite pleased with the results. I think what I have learned is that the earlier you give it, the more beneficial it is.”
She expects to see data from the Mayo study, in which more than 25,000 COVID-19 patients across the country have been treated with convalescent plasma, in the next few months..
She and Restivo were both at Menorah on Tuesday. Wongskhaluang was certain Avery wouldn’t remember meeting her in his ICU room. Everyone who walked into his room was unrecognizable, shrouded in full-on protective gear — gowns, gloves, giant hoods with air blowing through them that made it hard to hear anything else.
She wondered how scary those surroundings must have been for Avery when he finally “started waking up.”
‘I Beat COVID-19’
Avery returned to thank his hospital family with the family he was born into. They wore black T-shirts celebrating their victory over an infectious disease that has killed nearly 130,000 Americans.
“My Brother Beat COVID 19.”
“My Nephew Beat COVID 19.”
“My Grandson Beat COVID-19.”
Avery’s T-shirt declared: “I Beat COVID 19.”
He doesn’t remember much about his hospital stay. His family has told him the story.
He does, though, remember crying in the ER.
“Not to say it, but the first thing that went through my mind was that I wasn’t going to make it. And I … thought of my son,” he said. “I just remember praying and asking God to just allow me to be with them again. He did it, so. I’m nothing but grateful.”
His mother said having him home now is “just the biggest blessing for our family. It was a long, long journey. My Mother’s Day was one of the hardest Mother’s Day I’ve ever been through.”
Avery said he plans now on “getting back to my normal life” and making his way to “the new me.”
That new self begins a new year on Saturday, with a “safe and secure” celebration of his 24th birthday.
Shakell Avery, who just beat COVID-19, was born on the Fourth of July.
This story was originally published July 2, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
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