GERMANTOWN, Tenn. — A Germantown man is speaking out about his experience with COVID-19 after recovering from the deadly virus.
Hans Guenther won a tough battle with the coronavirus.
“It was miserable. It was awful. It was bad news. You don’t want this,” he says.
The 62-year-old got sick and started running a fever about a month ago, but he didn’t think it was COVID-19.
“Here’s the deal. I had no sore throat. I had no problems breathing,” Guenther says, “So, I thought I had a bad flu.”
He fought it for more than a week but didn’t get any better.
“My wife’s a registered nurse,” he says, “She looks into my lungs. They were not clear.”
So, he went to a minor emergency clinic where doctors told him he needed to be in the hospital. He was rushed by ambulance to Methodist Le Bonheur in Germantown where he lives.
“I got admitted. They did a chest x-ray. I had pneumonia in both lungs,” Guenther says.
He was tested for coronavirus and stayed in the hospital for three days.
“Your body aches. You’re sweating,” he says.
He says the pain was so bad, he feared for his life.
“It was in the back of my head going, ‘Are you gonna be a statistic? The wrong one’,” Guenther says.
Guenther got his positive test result the same day he was discharged, and he says he didn’t fully recover until this week.
“I was weak. You know, to put my pants on, I had to sit down,” he says.
Guenther says he was surprised by how hard the virus hit him, particularly because he didn’t have any underlying health issues.
“I have no idea how I got this,” he says, “I’m very active. I’m loving life. Everything’s good and then boom, this thing hits.”
He hopes his story will convince people to take social distancing seriously so the virus doesn’t hit them. He’s also working with Methodist to donate his plasma. He hopes it can help other patients.
