TMC PULSE

t m c n e w s . o r g 30 Recovery, Rehab and a High School Graduation For Phil Eaton and other survivors of severe cases of COVID-19, rehabilitation is key B y M a g g i e G a l e h o u s e Lake Creek High School principal Phil Eaton, who survived a rough battle with COVID-19, hosted the 2020 graduation ceremony at his school in Montgomery County, Texas. recalled. "Finally I said '2020,' and they looked at me kind of quiz- zically. For a second, I wanted to change my answer, but I didn't." Eaton, 63, is one of the lucky ones. He survived COVID-19, but regaining consciousness was hardly the end of his journey. Rather, it was the beginning of rehabilitation for both his body and his mind. "When I first got to TIRR Memorial Hermann The Woodlands, I couldn't stand up for School at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth). "We will be assessing speech and swallowing, because I anticipate that many COVID-19 patients had breathing tubes that affected their vocal cords and their ability to swallow safely." On the mental side, TIRR teams will assess cognition. "It is a well-known fact that those who have a severe form of respira- tory failure are more likely to have some cognitive problems, as well, because of a relative lack of oxygen going to the brain," Francisco said. * * * * * Eaton first started feeling poorly around March 9. He had a slight fever, so he took a few days off from work. On March 12, Montgomery Independent School District closed schools due to concerns about the spread of the coronavirus—one of the first districts in the Houston area to do so. On March 16, Eaton ended up at the emergency room at Memorial Hermann The Woodlands. Initially, he believed he had a sinus infection, but, ultimately, he was diagnosed with COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2. Two days later, doctors put him on a ventila- tor, where he remained for "20-and- a-half" days. His physical condition was grim. "Doctors cleaned out my lungs and then the lungs filled up again," Eaton said. "I guess they're hitting you with every kind of medication they can think of. Then my kidneys started to struggle. I was on dialysis a couple of times." During that period, family, friends, co-workers, students and parents braced for the worst. Eaton's daughter, Erika, who lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with her hus- band and their 15-month-old baby, W hen Phil Eaton first came out of sedation after a lengthy battle with COVID-19, doctors asked him a question that should have been easy. Who is the president? "I couldn't answer it," said Eaton, principal of Lake Creek High School in Montgomery County, Texas. The second question also gave him pause: Is it 2020, or some other year? "It took me some time," Eaton more than three to five seconds at a time. My default was: I'm alive. I'm not going to be upset or depressed about anything," said Eaton, who is 6 feet 4 inches tall and lost more than 50 pounds during his illness. "But at the same time I'm thinking: Is this going to be my life?" * * * * * Patients who recover from severe cases of COVID-19 do not simply rest a few days and resume their regular lives. "This virus affects each and every organ system in the body," said Gerard Francisco, M.D., chief medical officer for TIRR Memorial Hermann, a top-ranked Houston rehabilitation hospital with sev- eral satellite facilities around the metropolitan area. "Some people have reported problems with mem- ory, with thinking. Some of them describe themselves as being slower to function. … Right now we're not sure if it's the virus alone that's caus- ing this, or was it because of other medications or medical conditions that occurred while these patients were recovering?" TIRR leaders knew soon after the start of the pandemic that criti- cally ill COVID-19 survivors would need rehabilitation, thanks to early reports from China that described severe debilities in patients includ- ing stroke-like symptoms. Francisco and some of his colleagues have written a paper about what rehabil- itation specialists should expect, forthcoming in The Journal of the International Society for Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine. "On the physical side, I antici- pate we will have a lot of recondi- tioning, strengthening and building up to do," said Francisco, chairman and professor in the department of physical medicine and reha- bilitation at McGovern Medical

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