Brenda DeAnda Brenda’s Covid Journey

We are using this as a main way to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement.

Mom was diagnosed with scleroderma in 2001 Her symptoms started in 1998. For those of you who aren’t familiar with what scleroderma is. It’s a  chronic connective tissue disease classified as one of the automatic rheumatic diseases.  She has the limited type of scleroderma aka CREST 
-Calcinosis
-Raynaud phenomenan
-Esophageal Dysfunction
-Sclerodactyly
-Telangctasia

Ever since diagnoses she’s learned to be careful,(After enough times of being sick you learn quick) to take care of herself and be mindful not to get sick. The last few years even more so. Washing her hands, staying inside more during the cold months, resting when her body needed it, staying out of germy places, staying away from sick people and kids.
Well we all weren’t expecting 2020 to come raging in with Covid -19 but here it is.  Mom tried to be a snowbird in AZ while waiting to help our cousin Heather with a kidney transplant. Eventually covid halted those plans. And mom went back home to Iowa right as Covid started making news and shutting the country down. She quarantined. Did like they said. After a month or so and  quarantine started lifting, she  started safely venturing out during less busy hours to grocery shop , pick up her prescriptions, work her very part time job and tried to get back to a somewhat safe,  limited, & independent  life again.  Unfortunately, she was more high risk than even herself thought. She wore a mask, washed her hands, kept her distance.  Then around June 17 or so she started running fevers, got a covid test, slept a lot, didn’t have an appetite, lost her taste. June 24 she said she felt “weak” and couldn’t really make it up the 5 stairs in her house. She went to the hospital and admitted for covid and pneumonia. Now she’s in a the fight of her life.