COVID ‘takes no prisoners’: KC nurse who nearly died has one request this Thanksgiving

Be more thankful and more careful than ever this Thanksgiving.

That’s the heartfelt advice from Kansas City nurse Lynn Flora, who is just thankful to be alive today after a near-fatal brush with COVID-19. She spent 79 days in the hospital, 45 of them on a ventilator, then weeks in rehabilitation just to sit up, feed herself and walk again.

As a nurse, Flora has stared death in the face many times. But during her touch-and-go bout with coronavirus, it was her own death staring back at her.

She wishes that on no one.

“Nobody wants their family member to go through what I went through, nor does anyone want to go through what I went through,” Flora says. “I would strongly urge people to err on the side of caution here. If you don’t do it for yourself, do it for your family members or the people around you.

“This is a virus that takes no prisoners.”

With no comorbidity other than mild exercise asthma, Flora, who is 58, nonetheless came close to death. It began with a pronounced muscle and joint malaise one Friday after work at The University of Kansas Health System, then nausea and diarrhea. By Sunday, her breathing problems were worrisome enough to get tested. Her breathing deteriorated so much that by late Tuesday, she was admitted.

That was July 21. By her birthday on Aug. 7, she was in the ICU, intubated and unconscious. She remembers nothing again until struggling to awake about Sept. 8. At one point, doctors told her husband and daughter, who had only mild cases of COVID-19 themselves, to prepare their extended family. Flora wasn’t expected to live.

“Only by the grace of God did I survive. There is absolutely no reason I should’ve survived this, any way, shape or form,” she says.

Support, prayer from friends and coworkers

The aftermath can be nearly as excruciating. To be immobilized so long plays havoc with your bones and muscle.

“I’m now seeing a chiropractor to try to get my neck straightened out and my upper shoulders straightened out, because they were so badly out of place,” Flora says.

“I can’t complain about that. They saved my life.”

The nurse naturally credits the stellar care at The University of Kansas Health System for her recovery — “I believe in that institution so much. I could not have gotten any better care anywhere else in this nation” — but says, “There’s one thing that absolutely made the difference.

“I had family, community, coworker and friend support from every corner of this country. They were there every minute that I was in the hospital.”

Support and prayer from all over the country swarmed her even while unconscious, after having made so many work friends as a travel nurse over the years. Closer by, concerned friends and coworkers kept a vigil just outside her room.

“They finally had to tell them that they couldn’t come up to the ICU anymore because they’d stand outside my door and cry and pray for me.”

But even with such an outpouring of care, she wouldn’t wish this journey on anyone.

To share that kind of love with your own family and friends this holiday season, it’s clearly best to do it remotely.

As much as we love our family and friends outside our daily bubble, do any of us really have any we can completely trust to be virus-free at this point? We asked an expert.

Virus spread at Halloween, restaurants meals

“People are going to bars and restaurants and not social distancing, which leads to virus spread,” says Dr. Dana Hawkinson, medical director of infection prevention and control at The University of Kansas Health System. “More importantly, especially with recent special events like Halloween combined with the weather getting colder, people are still getting together in their homes. With the current rate of community infection, the risk of having just one person with the infection coming into that group gathering is extremely high.”

Take it from a nurse who’s seen the danger for herself and lived to tell of it. Barely.

“It’s a special Thanksgiving for me, because when you stare death in the face like that, it really makes you reevaluate what is important in your life,” Flora says. “Love of family and friends. That’s what is important in your life. That’s my takeaway on this whole thing. If you don’t want to wear a mask, please look your family members in the face and ask yourself if you can put them through what I have been through and live with yourself.

“It serves no purpose to have a big family gathering if, three weeks down the road, you’re burying some of those family members.”

There’s never a bad time to give thanks.

But there’s rarely been a more dangerous one. Stay safe.