A 21-year-old Florida man thought he had recovered from a mild case of COVID-19, and then was hospitalized when his organs began to close.
Spencer Rollyson, of Canaveral Groves, tested positive for the coronavirus in May, but he began to return to normal life after experiencing mild symptoms and then testing negative after they left, WESH-TV reported.
“A bit of a cough, a slight fever of 99.4, I think, the first few days and then I lost the smell after about two and a half weeks and that was my only symptom for the whole two weeks,” Rollyson said . “May 21 is the day I finally got my negative test results.”
Rollyson went back to his family’s business at that point, but soon after, he began to experience symptoms again.
“I work outside, and I was wearing a jacket and it was 96 degrees outside and I was still cold,” he said. “I was sick again, on June 11 it was when I started to feel it again. My fever dropped to 103.4 for, like, two days. ”
He died during an appointment with an online doctor and was taken to a hospital, where his heart and several other organs failed.
“Something like coronavirus weakened my immune system,” Rollyson said, “which caused me to have all these other symptoms and end up with sepsis and all that. I’m not sitting on a ventilator. I think it’s called BiPAP. It’s a mask that is put on your face and put on the bandage, and that basically does all the breathing for me. ‘
Rollyson feared he would die, but he was treated and released five days later, although he has not yet fully returned almost two months later.
“I should not bring my heart rate up at the moment because it can lead to heartbeat,” he said.
Rollyson is taking blood pressure medication and continues to see a cardiologist for heart problems, and he hopes others take the potentially deadly virus more seriously than he did.
“I thought it wasn’t that big,” he said. “That’s why I posted on Facebook to my friends and family, take this seriously – I’m 21 years old and have a great health record, no problems, and it’s almost my life. There is no reason to take this light. I can not encourage people enough to take it seriously. ”
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