Pastor on ventilator at Fresno hospital survived. He wouldn’t wish COVID-19 on ‘worst enemy’
The Rev. Mark Wallace thinks of coronavirus like tornadoes he once lived through in Oklahoma.
“One house and one car doesn’t get touched, and the next-door neighbor is devastated and loses it all,” Wallace said. “That is COVID-19 to me.”
He was the one hit hard this time after he and his wife Tammy Wallace tested positive for coronavirus last month. Tammy got a bad fever and recovered at home. Mark ended up in a Fresno hospital for a month – two of those weeks connected to a ventilator and fighting for his life while restrained on an intensive care unit bed.
The pain was so excruciating that he sometimes prayed God would let him die.
“I know a lot of people are scared right now – losing jobs, the economy,” Mark said of stay-at-home orders, “but everyone has to just take a deep breath and realize that … it’s not the government taking our freedom … if they see this side of it, what I went through. They’re just trying to protect as many thousands of people as they can from having to go though the very same thing.
“I wouldn’t wish what I went through on my very worst enemy in the world.”
Desperate month in hospital with coronavirus
Tammy started feeling unwell in March, following an emergency pacemaker surgery. She initially thought her symptoms were related to that, but lab results came back normal, so she and Mark were tested for COVID-19. The Dinuba couple learned they had the contagious virus April 2.
As Tammy got over a bad fever, Mark’s was just the start of a dangerous decline in health. The 56-year-old previously considered himself pretty healthy, aside from diabetes. He lost his appetite and got so weak he couldn’t get out of bed. He ended up being transported by ambulance to Kaiser Permanente Fresno.
Mark thought he was just dehydrated and would be sent home after receiving IV fluids. Instead, he learned he had severe pneumonia and would need to be connected to a ventilator to help him breathe as soon as possible – before his health declined to the point where hooking him up would be too much of a risk.
Tammy asked doctors about her husband’s chance of survival: None without a ventilator, and a slim chance with one, she said.
Mark would spend 13 and a half days connected to a machine that breathed for him. He was in the hospital for 28 days – 24 of them in the ICU.
Mark slipped in and out of consciousness during that time. Awaking for the first time in the ICU to find himself intubated and strapped to his bed, unable to move or talk, was terrifying. His lungs, kidney, liver and heart were failing and he wasn’t responding to treatments.
“I can’t tell you how many times I said, ‘God, I’m ready, just take me home. I can’t live like this.’ The pain was excruciating. They had to flip you over on your back and stomach. I felt like a hot cake.”
But Mark said he had great nurses and doctors who helped him through that nightmare. In early video calls with his family, who weren’t allowed in the hospital to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Mark answered their questions by wiggling his toes.
Doctors and nurses came in and out of his room wearing so much protective equipment they reminded him of astronauts in space. He missed his children, grandchildren and wife – a fellow pastor who finishes his sentences and who he’d rarely been separated from throughout 36 years of marriage.
“The times I remember was panic – crying, just crying uncontrollably,” Mark said. “Terrible thoughts, that I’d never see my family again. … One night, I said, ‘God, you’ve got to give me something to hang onto,’ and I could literally feel my wife’s hair and my fingers running through her hair, and I dreamed that all night long and it carried me through the night.”
Worldwide prayers for healing
One of Mark’s daughter-in-laws who works as a nurse read hundreds of pages of medical research about COVID-19 during this time to try and help. She broke down crying one night, telling her husband that Mark would need a miracle to survive.
Beyond the medical care Mark received, the Wallaces believe that miracle came from prayer. Mark is senior pastor of Living Word Fellowship in Dinuba.
Tammy said Mark turned a corner in mid-April, after their young grandson started praying: “God, let Grandpa be so refreshed that he would feel like he’s 10 years old again.”
Health care workers played Christian worship music in Mark’s hospital room to help lift his spirits.
Tammy also made Facebook posts asking for prayers for her husband that resulted in prayers pouring in from people across 42 U.S. states and nearly 20 countries.
“It has so humbled me and I sit in awe,” Mark said. “It has restored my faith in the body of Christ around the world, when people that we don’t even know and will never meet are sending us Facebook messages, ‘I’m praying for you from South Africa, from Australia, from Canada, from Uganda.’”
Doctors share emotional goodbye
Mark was able to return home on Thursday.
Dr. Elisa Avik, a critical care pulmonologist at Kaiser, called it fitting that the pastor was discharged from the hospital on the National Day of Prayer.
“I didn’t realize how emotional I would be,” Avik said. “I held his hand and we both started crying. The hard work paid off.”
Mark is the first Kaiser Permanente Fresno coronavirus patient on a ventilator to be sent directly home. Another who was on a ventilator was discharged to a rehabilitation facility.
Kaiser didn’t share how many coronavirus patients have been treated at its Fresno hospital, or how many have required ventilators. The Fresno County Public Health Department said Tuesday that a total of 140 of nearly 1,000 COVID-19 cases in the county required hospitalizations.
Avik offered a tip for those recovering from coronavirus at home: Sleep on your stomach.
“It really does work,” said the doctor who specializes in respiratory health. “It changes the lung physiology. It changes oxygen and blood circulation in the lungs.”
Mark is incredibly grateful for the care he received from Avik and other health care workers.
Kaiser organized a surprise sendoff for Mark. Hospital workers lined the halls Thursday to wave goodbye and wish him well as Mark was wheeled out in a wheelchair for an emotional reunion with his wife. Avik called it a warm, joyful occasion that staff really needed as they prepare for a possible second wave of COVID-19 cases as more businesses and places are now reopening.
Members of Mark’s church also surprised him by cheering from parked cars along his route home.
Back in Dinuba, 30 pounds lighter than when he was admitted to the hospital, Mark is now learning to walk without a walker, determined to return to the pulpit and keep preaching – what he’s done for the past 35 years.
Tammy hopes community members treat coronavirus seriously, not “flippantly,” and continue to maintain enough social distance to stay safe.
“When it touches someone in your family like the way it touches ours, you can’t wear a mask long enough,” Tammy said. “You can’t stay in your house long enough.”
