KANSAS CITY, MO — Mia Ramsey survived her bout with COVID-19 more than two months ago, but she is sounding the alarm as she continues to deal with extreme fatigue and memory problems.
Ramsey hopes her story will help remind people who are weary of social distancing why it's worth the effort to wear masks and wash hands, helping themselves and others avoid the pain and suffering so many experience because of COVID-19.
Ramsey, who lives in Kansas City, Missouri, came back from the brink of death. She's smiling again — surrounded by her husband, Darrell, who also survived his own encounter with COVID-19, and her daughters.
Mia has joy again after enduring serious pain. COVID-19 literally took her breath away.
"We take breathing for granted; we really do," Mia said, "because just the slightest movement was painstaking just to breathe."
Mia was rushed to Saint Luke's Hospital near the Country Club Plaza on Aug. 1 and spent nine days in the hospital.
"I was asking God, 'So, this is it? This is how I'm going to go out. This is how my life is going to end with COVID 19?'" she said.
But she also took a few lessons from the experience that she hopes others will hear and understand.
For starters, it's not simply a really bad flu.
She'd heard people say, "Oh, it's just like the flu, it's just like the flu."
"It's not," Mia said. "It's not anything like that."
Mia is a well-known Christian singer in the Kansas City area and a worship leader at Kingdom Word Ministries. She loves entertaining, traveling and having fun.
She also understands that some people are tired of social distancing, but she's encouraging them to remain vigilant.
"For me, the life lesson is safety over socializing," Mia said. "I don't know that I have to socialize that bad that I would risk my life without a mask."
Mia credits Remdesivir, an antiviral often used to treat hospitalized COVID-19 patients, and prayer as the one-two punch to knock COVID-19 out of her system.
But even though it's gone and she's no longer positive for COVID-19, she's not free from it's health impacts, including memory issues that cropped up during the interview as she occasionally struggled to answer questions.
"I'm so sorry, Cynthia," Mia said. "I'm trying to remember. I'm having — that's one of the things, just memory. Brain fog is one of the after effects of COVID, so I'm trying to remember. And so, I have to take my time when I'm thinking so it doesn't look so obvious that I'm struggling right now."
Mia's husband, Darrell, also a COVID-19 survivor, understands better than anyone else what Mia is experiencing as the Ramsey family works to heal from it's brush with COVID-19.
