DOC Ted is among the most high-profile doctors who has been leading medical rescue missions in major disaster areas even outside the country. He became Covid-19 patient number PH-1827 and lived to tell the sufferings such that even a physically fit medical rescue doctor like him was already prepared to die. With God, no family.
A seasoned mountaineer and the doctor of the Philippine Everest Team, Doc Ted whose real name is Teofredo Esguerra, originally from Bansalan, Davao del Sur, was the last person you’d think would succumb to a virus. He did and barely survived it. As if the virus knew they found a host who’d give a good fight, Doc Ted got the meanest dose, name it, Doc got it. The cykotine storm, dry cough that made his head seem to burst, blood clots that showed in very high readings in D-Dimer tests administered, body malaise, diarrhea, loss of sense of smell, and a metallic taste in the mouth that all took their sweet time to go away.
His battle with the virus is a warning to all: This disease is no joke and it can wait in ambush from asymptomatic patients. Doc Ted got the virus from his wife, a government doctor in the frontlines of the Covid-19 fight, whom he was driving to and from work every day while he himself worked from home. Energy Development Corporation (EDC), where he works, was very particular about the virus and thus sent all employees to work from home in the early part of the pandemic. The virus was waiting at home.
His wife was asymptomatic all throughout. From pre-confinement, during confinement, and the post-confinement 14-day quarantine period. Had Doc Ted not fallen ill, she would not have suspected she had it.
“She never showed any cough, fever, diarrhea, etc. she was detected positive for Covid on April 2 and was confined on April 3. Preceding that, she was one of the asymptomatic entities in the population who can contaminate others. That’s how dangerous she was,” he said. Luckily, all their brood – two boys aged 21 and 15, and two girls aged 16 and 13, were spared the virus.
Indeed, the most regular-looking person you mingle with can be a carrier and it’s up to the virus to manifest the worst or spare you to become a deadly silent carrier.
Being a medical doctor, he is familiar with the tests and laboratory procedures that needed to be done, but he admits that one of the most difficult parts is in realizing you’re down with something that has no definite cure at the moment.
“It all seemed like experimental for me. I underwent blood extraction after another to test as to why the meds given to me were not working. Initially, I took two oral medicines and one intravenously,” he said. The confirmation that he has the virus came on March 29 after he felt body malaise like nothing he has felt in his life evening of March 24.
“It was my first time to feel that gnawing pain which is more pronounced when my body parts touch the bed. I kept on turning left and right. I was somehow relieved when I slept in a prone position. Then dry cough and slight fever came slowly,” he said.
