After surviving a bout with COVID-19, a Maryland woman is urging the public not to get complacent in the middle of the pandemic.
“Don’t think it can’t happen to you,” Sandy Oxx of New Market, Maryland, told WTOP. “I appreciate the opportunity to be a mask ambassador – I guess that’s my new title.”
Oxx said she and her family members felt they were being appropriately cautious, only leaving home for food and essential errands. She described herself as being “healthy as a horse.”
However, after a weekend of everyone in the house feeling lousy, her husband and son felt better, but she didn’t.
Oxx’s fever lasted nine days, it became tougher to breathe, and she developed a cough before seeking help.
Hospitalized five days fighting COVID-19 and pneumonia, Oxx never needed breathing assistance.
Now back home for more than a week, feeling “terrific” but not 100%, Oxx considers herself lucky and fortunate considering how badly some people struggle with the virus.
“Definitely, once you have it, you look at all of the controversy differently; you know, the mask wearing thing,” she said. “I just want to shake people saying: ‘This is not a hoax; this is not fake. Anybody can get it.’”
To help keep up her spirits and muscle tone, Oxx said she did the Cupid Shuffle regularly while hospitalized. The line dance’s rhythmic rap song instructs participants to shuffle to both the left and right.
With the virus now behind Oxx, her biggest concern is how politicized she feels the wearing of masks has become.
“I think people are wearing a mask or not wearing a mask based on their political beliefs rather than their intelligence of science telling us that it helps,” Oxx said.
A last plea from Oxx is for everyone to “do their part” to help get the virus under control.
“My counsel would be get your recommendations from scientists and not politicians and not neighbors and not your friends on Facebook. Listen to the experts.”
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