A Brazil respiratory therapist becomes a patient
Ana Carolina Xavier, a young 33-year-old respiratory physiotherapist in Rio de Janeiro, is sounding the alarm on the coronavirus. After having helped rehabilitate so many who suffered from COVID-19, she herself became a patient in June.
She had been treating as many as six coronavirus patients a day to slowly recover lung capacity when one day, she felt her heart pounding, head throbbing and lungs struggling to expand.
She says the disease, which still has many unknowns, is unlike any condition she's treated.
(SOUNDBITE) (Portuguese) PHYSIOTHERAPIST, CAROLINA XAVIER, SAYING:
"I think it is different from any shortness of breath, pneumonia and asthma that anyone has ever had. It feels like the air is never going to fill up in your lungs again."
A scan of her lungs showed the kind of damage she had seen wreaking havoc on her patients, many of them young and otherwise healthy - but now struggling to catch their breath.
Now back at work, one of those patients is 40-year-old samba singer and vocal coach Marcia Guimaraes, who recently found herself short of breath in the middle of giving a voice lesson.
(SOUNDBITE) (Portuguese) MARCIA GUIMARAES, A 40-YEAR-OLD SAMBA SINGER:
"It is much more serious than we think. You think you will never get it and when it does it's scary. So instead of waiting to get it, look after yourself.''
Her respiratory treatment has had to adapt to the pandemic. Ordinarily, Xavier said, respiratory therapy would involve deep breaths and exhalation.... but there was concern that could put her and others at risk of the disease more widely.
Now, she's focused on a more passive form of therapy... raising patients' arms while monitoring their breathing and oxygen levels, and massaging them to help their diaphragms contract...
Before, she felt like an athletic coach pushing patients to keep working through the exhaustion. Now, having been through it herself, she knows when to let them rest.
