{"id":100282,"date":"2021-01-19T09:14:28","date_gmt":"2021-01-19T14:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=100282"},"modified":"2024-01-04T14:46:08","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T19:46:08","slug":"ddn-former-wright-state-athletes-seeing-the-devastation-of-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2021\/01\/19\/ddn-former-wright-state-athletes-seeing-the-devastation-of-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Dayton Daily News: Former Wright State athletes seeing \u2018the devastation\u2019 of COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"

Excerpt<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"They\u2019ve all seen people in stores and clubs, standing outside restaurants and attending basketball games, meetings and church while refusing to wear masks. They\u2019ve seen people letting their guard down and gathering in large groups.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve even heard people denying the severity of COVID-19. And then there are those so irresponsible or obtuse or politically warped that they claim there is no coronavirus at all.<\/p>\n

Dr. Brian Cothern and registered nurses Taylor Schweickart and Mylan Woods are all former Wright State athletes who now are working in the medical field.<\/p>\n

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They are putting their own lives on the line as they deal with the pandemic that has laid siege to the nation and they\u2019ve seen, as Cothern put it, \u201cthe devastation\u201d COVID can cause and how it can \u201creally ruin families.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet, when I suggested it would be good lesson for those selfish and clueless naysayers to spend a day with her at Miami Valley Hospital in order to see COVID-19 up close, Woods \u2013 a two-time Ohio Division II Basketball Player of the Year before playing at Northwestern and then for the Raiders \u2013 promptly disagreed:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cActually, no I wouldn\u2019t want that. I\u2019d hate for other people to go through this. I\u2019ve been that nurse who has had to FaceTime someone\u2019s family when their loved one is in the hospital, maybe dying, and they can\u2019t see them.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u201cThe nurses up there in the ICU see that and feel that every day. The take it home with them. They\u2019re battling some real serious mental health issues of their own now.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u201cWhen I was there, I\u2019d come home sometimes and just cry. Other times I\u2019d just vent. And sometimes I just needed to be all alone.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u201cSo no, I wouldn\u2019t tell anybody to come and spend a day in my shoes.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t wish that on anyone.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Cothern \u2013 a former first team, All-Horizon League soccer player who graduated from Wright State\u2019s medical school, did his internship there and now is finishing his fellowship in cardiology at St. Francis Hospital in Indianapolis \u2013 knows what Woods is talking about:<\/span><\/div>\n
\n

\u201cThe hardest thing is to tell someone they\u2019re dying and, because no visitors are being allowed in, they have no one there to comfort them and help them through it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes if a person is about to go on a ventilator, they may be taking their last breath on their own. That\u2019s scary.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese encounters happen every single day and they never get any easier.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, these situations are occurring more and more.<\/p>\n

Even with the bumpy rollout of two vaccines in the United States, 2021 \u2013 almost unbelievably \u2013 has started out even worse than 2020.<\/p>\n

In the past two weeks or so, the U.S. has shattered its all-time daily records for COVID infections, hospitalizations and deaths.<\/p>\n

According to a CNN report Friday, the nation recorded 302,506 infections on Jan 2. That\u2019s one case every 3.5 seconds. On Jan., 6, 132,447 people were hospitalized and just five days ago there were 4,462 deaths in a 24-hour period.<\/p>\n

Over the next three weeks, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced 90,000 people could die from COVID-19.<\/p>\n

No one knows the impact of the virus any more than Schweickart.<\/p>\n

The West Carrollton High School grad who ran track at Wright State now works as a nurse in Los Angeles, which is the new epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak.<\/p>\n

Los Angeles County \u2013 the largest in the nation with a population of 10 million \u2013 has had 1 of every 10 residents test positive for COVID. A person is dying from it there every eight seconds.<\/p>\n

Hospitals, ambulance services, funeral homes \u2013 and especially medical people \u2013 are overwhelmed.<\/p>\n

Since December, Schweickart has been working as a swabbing nurse at a drive-through testing site outside of a West Los Angeles medical center. Covered head to toe in PPE (personal protective equipment), she comforts anxious people and answers their questions as she tests them for COVID.<\/p>\n

She said some 400 to 600 people a day come through her testing site.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really crazy,\u201d she said by phone during her lunch break. \u201cHospitals are so over-crowded, people are being treated in the gift shops and out in the parking lots.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dozens of hospitals have shut their emergency room doors to ambulances for hours at a time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t been in this very long, but it\u2019s unlike anything I\u2019ve seen and it\u2019s nothing like we were taught in medical school,\u201d Cothern said. \u201cI\u2019ve got a bunch of bosses in their 60s and they said they\u2019ve never seen anything like this either.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Woods doesn\u2019t want the general public to see it up close like she and Schweickart and Cothern are, she does have one suggestion:<\/p>\n

\u201cJust wear your friggin\u2019 mask!\u201d<\/p>\n

View the entire original story at daytondailynews.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They\u2019ve all seen people in stores and clubs, standing outside restaurants and attending basketball games, meetings and church while refusing to wear masks. They\u2019ve seen people letting their guard down and gathering in large groups. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":48525,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[730],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wright-state-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100282"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145279,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100282\/revisions\/145279"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}