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Wife of man who was Joco’s first COVID-19 death finally gets tested and it’s positive
Joanna Wilson, the wife of the man who was Johnson County’s first COVID-19 death, now has tested positive for the virus.
She got a test last week through the University of Kansas Hospital, she said, after she developed some symptoms and the Johnson County Department of Health and Environment declined to test her.
“I called them twice after Dennis died to see if I could get tested because I was his caregiver, and they said no,” Joanna Wilson told The Star on Wednesday. “Now I’m sitting home with symptoms, and I have the disease.
“So now, when you see the Kansas statistics flash across the screen, you’ve got Dennis in one category and me in the other.”
Dennis Wilson, 74, of Lenexa, a retired school superintendent, died March 21, just five days after a test confirmed he had coronavirus.
Joanna Wilson said a man from the Johnson County Department of Health and Environment contacted her on March 18 — two days after her husband was admitted to the ICU at AdventHealth’s main campus in Overland Park — to see if she had any symptoms.
At the time, she did not. But after Dennis died, she said, she was concerned about being exposed and called the health department to see if she could get tested.
“He was like, ‘Nope, you don’t need to do anything.’”
Last week, when she started having symptoms, she said, she called the health department and again asked to be tested.
“I told him I had symptoms, and they still wouldn’t do it,” she said. “He didn’t give me any guidance on what I should be doing.”
So on Friday, she called a friend whose sister is an internal medicine doctor at the University of Kansas Hospital.
“They took me on as a patient right away,” Wilson said. “I had a telemed visit, and that ball got rolling fast. She ordered me a test, I went to their location at Indian Creek on Saturday, got tested in the drive-thru and got the results back Monday morning.”
She said she’d been in self-quarantine since her husband died, and the 14 days would have ended Saturday.
“I could have been out Sunday getting my essential items, exposing 20, 40, 60 people,” said Wilson, a retired nurse. “But I knew better, so I never left quarantine at all.
“The thing that bothers me is that most of the people that call the health department are the regular public that don’t have a medical background or knowledge of what to do, and they’re calling them for direction. No wonder we can’t flatten the curve.”
The health department said in an email Wednesday afternoon that Joanna Wilson’s son, Luke Wilson — a doctor — had called last week to request a test for his mother but “at that time, the symptoms (clinical features) that were reported did not meet the epidemiological risk.”
The department follows Kansas Department of Health and Environment protocol in order to determine who gets tested, said spokeswoman Barbara Mitchell. Someone who has been in close contact with a person who has tested positive for COVID-19 would not be tested unless that person has a temperature of more than 100 degrees or has a cough or shortness of breath, according to the KDHE criteria.
Luke Wilson told The Star that he had a heated discussion with someone from the Johnson County department after they said his mother couldn’t be tested. After he got off the phone, he said, he learned that his mother had arranged to go to KU.
Mitchell said that after Luke Wilson called, the Johnson County health department contacted KDHE — which does the tests for the health department — to see if it would run a test for Joanna Wilson anyway, and KDHE agreed to do so.
“JCDHE then called back and left a message on the son’s phone saying that JCDHE could test or she could work with her healthcare provider for testing,” Mitchell said. “JCDHE did not receive a call back. It is confusing to understand the testing protocol that a health department has to follow. I hope Mrs. Wilson is feeling better. She and her family have had to deal with a lot in a short amount of time!”
Joanna Wilson said she’s had symptoms for a little more than a week.
“Food hasn’t tasted good, and I haven’t really had a sense of taste,” she said. “But I don’t have a fever or any aches. So far, I have mild symptoms, and let’s hope it stays that way.”
She went through a similar issue when her husband became ill. He went to two urgent care clinics with flu-like symptoms, but they wouldn’t test him because he didn’t have a fever. Eight days after the second urgent care visit, he died.
When she learned of her test results Monday, she said, “I was really sad.”
“I’m usually the fixer,” she said. “But I couldn’t fix Dennis, and now I’ve got this.
“I’ve been by myself since I came home from the hospital when Dennis died. It’s so quiet. I miss my kids. But that’s how it has to be.”
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