“It’s a parent’s worst nightmare, just watching her child suffer through that and not really being able to do anything,” Desiree Cady said of her 19-year-old son.
Her son William ‘Ikaika’ Bailey contracted COVID-19 two times, and he’s currently fighting for his life.
The first person in the US to receive a COVID-19 diagnosis happened on January 20, 2020, and on March 11 the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus a pandemic.
It’s hard to fathom that any of this took place in 2020, much less roughly six months ago.
So much has happened in the short span of time. We have lost more than 170,000 Americans and more there has been more than 5.4 million confirmed cases.
Cady said William was a healthy young adult who had graduated from a Central California high school in 2019.
Sometime in June he began to feel ill.
Initially she thought it was allergies, but when he came down with a high fever they went to the hospital where he tested positive for COVID-19.
“He would shiver and it was warm and then he would get hot when it was cold and then the fever and the cough. It was horrible,” she said.
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After two weeks, it seemed as though the virus had left his body. But Cady noticed something wasn’t right with her son.
After eventually rushing him to the hospital, they learned not only had tested positive for COVID-19 again, but his heart was failing.
William had a hole in his heart, which doctors insist was previously there though COVID-19 made it worse, and he needed surgery immediately.
The past two months have been extremely difficult for William and his family.
“He just looked so weak and I was just terrified of losing my son,” Cady said.
The teen is not out of the woods yet, but his mother says her son’s name, Ikaika, which means “strong” in Hawaiian, proves he will make it through.
A GoFundMe has been set up to help the family cover William’s medical expenses.
There are so many stories like this. It breaks my heart to think of how many other people are suffering because of this deadly virus.
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