Hub and Spoke. Audio Collective.

This is Rumbel Strip America Heilman.

They say one of the common things that happens to people that have high fever and a lot of COVID patients do is that at the height of their illness they start seeing things.

And we normally describe these as being hallucinations or daydreams or things

like that. In my case, they were an important part of my experience of being deathly ill.

That's Daniel Kirk. He's a children's book author and illustrator, and he lives with his wife in New Jersey about 12 miles outside of Manhattan

They were both infected with COVID last March before it had spread much in the US and they still don't know where they got it.

By now we know a lot more about COVID. We hear about the symptoms. We can recite the symptoms.

But what does it actually feel like to struggle to breathe?

And for those who become deathly ill,

who slip into some state between waking and dreaming,

where is that exactly?

A few days after his diagnosis, Daniel's fever. is that

a few days after his diagnosis, Daniel's fever had climbed to 104.

Here's Daniel Kirk.

My wife started to feel better, and I thought to myself well I should feel better too

because we both had the same thing why aren't I getting better I was getting worse

my ability to concentrate and even sit upright or talk, were getting really, really compromised.

And then at a certain point I really couldn't do anything anymore. I couldn't work.

I couldn't think. All I could do is lie flat on my back and cough and feel miserable.

And we'd hear about people, what they would get is treatment in the hospital and they would get

ventilators and stuff and I was like, I need a ventilator.

...