The Tribune

By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Tribune Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

DR DANELLE Rolle-McFarland, a Bahamian research scientist living in Florida, has all the symptoms of someone who should test positive for COVID-19.

She has “gripping” chest pressure, trouble breathing, fever, body aches and a menacing hacking dry cough.

While both she and her physician were sure her body was being ravaged by the potentially deadly novel coronavirus, Dr Rolle-McFarland tested negative.

It was an eyebrow-raising result, one her doctor called a “false negative”. Dr Rolle-McFarland has been self-quarantining and following her doctor’s advice on treating her symptoms for the last three weeks.

The researcher for a cancer biotech company told The Tribune yesterday that while her condition is improving, she continues to combat extreme tiredness and is plagued by a cough. Dr Rolle-McFarland has also lost her sense of smell and taste.

During our interview with the 29-year-old via phone, her cough was persistent. The virus, she said, was far worse than living through swine flu in 2009.

Her troubles started in early March shortly after a work trip to New York. There, the Nassau native had come into contact with a colleague from New Rochelle, NY.

The small city, just North of New York City, was considered a hotspot for the virus because a cluster of cases popped up there, forcing the state to enforce quarantine measures.

“I got back from New York at the beginning of the month and usually when I fly I get a little sniffle (and) I get groggy, but then I started to have a fever and then I woke up the next day and I said something’s not right,” she recalled.

“So just over the course of the couple of days I started to have fevers. I started to be really achy. I had a headache and then I started coughing.

“I knew at that time a colleague of mine, she’s from New Rochelle. That neighbourhood in New York is where they had that really bad outbreak and so she had gotten quarantined, in fact her whole neighbourhood did.

“So then I was just watching the symptoms and kind of aligned them with what the CDC and World Health Organisation were saying.”

Her attempts to self-medicate using over-the-counter medications had not helped, so the next move was to contact health officials.

“I hate going to the doctor. I first did the normal things they tell you to take for the coughing and fever and I was doing the social distancing and isolating.

“A few days in, I said this isn’t working. I felt really bad and decided to call the health department first. They told me because I hadn’t come into contact with a confirmed case I couldn’t get tested by them but they told me to call my physician and go in to them.

“I was kinda back and forth between them and my doctor and then finally my doctor said come in.

“All the while I was slowly deteriorating and realising I couldn’t just sit here.”

Once she did go in to her physician, it took about one week and half to get the results due to a backlog.

“When the test did come back negative, my doctor didn’t believe it was accurate. They wanted me to come back and be retested but at that point I was like no, not to be waiting another week and a half for results.

“So here I am. He said assume what I have is indeed COVID-19 and just keep isolating myself.”

Of her experience, the most terrifying has been difficulty breathing, she said.

“I think the shortness of breath was the scariest part. I know we are comparing it to the flu and a lot of the symptoms are flu-like, but that shortness of breath - like I would cough and literally would be doubled over because I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

“That would be the part where I tell people it was scary.”

Currently, Dr Rolle-McFarland is on a cough suppressant, inhaler and recently completed antibiotics for an infection. She said she’s been told to go into an emergency room if the symptoms worsen and continue to self-isolate.

If you are experiencing flu-like symptoms, health officials say do not visit a doctor. Instead call your physician to arrange the next steps and avoid exposing others.

For more information, contact the Ministry of Health’s COVID-19 Hotline at 376-9350 (8am-8pm) and 376-9387 (8pm – 8am); 502-7382 or toll free 1-242-300-2619.

Information and updates on COVID-19 can also be found at https://www.covid19.gov.bs and the Ministry of Health’s Facebook page.