This was really bad for you
and you thought it was like curtains,
it was gonna be the end of the line.
And then they gave you first hydroxychloroquine,
and that didn't really help
but then they gave you chloroquine, correct?
Yeah, what happened is
I went into the hospital March 15th.
They tested me,
I had already had bilateral pneumonia,
I had severe aches and pains,
I couldn't breathe and I had that cough
that everybody talks about
that you cough so much you just can't catch your breath.
By Tuesday the 17th
is when they told me that I tested positive
and they had given me the hydroxychloroquine.
They gave it to me in the morning,
they gave it to me afternoon.
The next day, Wednesday, they did the same thing
and then for some reason,
Thursday, my doctor switched me
from that to just the chloroquine.
At this point,
I thought I was gonna pass away.
My numbers were horrible,
my oxygen level was at 87, 88,
my breathing was bad,
my blood work was horrible
and I called my wife on Thursday morning and said,
"I am not gonna make it."
I thought I was really one coughing fit
away from passing out.
I figured if I passed out, I may not come back.
But they gave me the chloroquine
Thursday morning, Thursday afternoon.
At about midnight Thursday night,
I woke up and I said,
"I feel a little bit better."
And then Friday I felt better,
Saturday I felt better
and Sunday, I called my wife and I said,
"I feel this is manageable now.
"I feel like I'm coughing less,
"I'm not gasping for air."
I mean I felt like I was drowning.
I was gasping for air for like five days.
Yeah, well apparently you kind of were
from what I understand.
But were there any side effects
from taking the medication?
For me, no.
I had zero side effects.
I felt like within a couple more days,
I was really just kind of back to my old self.
They had me on it for 10 days.
I believe it was somewhere around 1,000 milligrams a day.
So once I was done,
I got out of the hospital April 1st
and I've been okay ever since.
This is usually a drug
that treats malaria, sometimes lupus,
and Rita Wilson, Tom Hanks' wife,
took this drug as well
and experienced extreme side effects,
according to her.
So it's great that you didn't.
I'm really glad that you responded to it
and you did so quickly.
Is this a reasonable drug to be treating this disorder with
and is this something that is likely to be used widespread
until something better comes along?
There basically are three repurposed drugs,
chloroquine, kaletra and remdesivir
that were being tested widely.
It was on the Chinese and the South Korean protocols
and it's being implemented for severe cases
in the US protocols.
The evidence is still a little complicated
on how effective it is.
There was a French study that came out
that suggested it wasn't helping that much.
There's a couple different reasons
why we think it could help.
The challenge here
is that 90% of people
who are in hospital are gonna recover.
And so we don't know right away
if we give them the medicine,
did the medicine help
or would they just have gone
and gotten better at that point anyway?
I would say right now they should give it
and they should continue to evaluate the studies to see,
even if there's a little bit of a benefit,
are you turning the corner
because he responded well to the medicine,
or was his immune system kicking in
and that's what helped him turn the corner?
The way you answer that question
is you monitor large numbers of people.
At this point,
you should throw all the spaghetti against the wall
as long as there aren't serious side effects.
I would say of the ones that I would give a patient,
if you have the serum from a convalescent patient,
I think that is the one I would prefer to receive.
But the problem is there just aren't that many donors
compared to the numbers that are sick.
So that's where we are.
And I realize that's sort of a murky answer
but that's where we are
unfortunately in the medical practice.
We're trying to give medicines
without a lot of knowledge
behind which ones are the most effective.
Well, I totally agree with what you're saying though
when you get to a bad spot,
you do what you can do.
Dr. Saunders, what do you think about it?
Yeah, I agree, the data is still not there yet
for us to really recommend any of these.
Our hospital, we are starting
to give convalescent serum as well
and we're hopeful that's gonna work
as part of a trial
but we're still waiting for really good data
on any of these treatments.