This is the next in a series of features focusing on Newtown residents who have contracted and/or suffered through the effects of COVID-19.

“At work they refer to me as the mask Nazi,” said Newtown resident and medical assistant Dee Cocchia Davis.

But despite the extraordinary measures Davis said she has taken since the virus began spreading in February to protect herself, she recalled vividly in correspondence with The Newtown Bee, on “July 20, it hit.”

The situation was all the more frustrating — check that, maddening to Davis — given not only the steps she was taking to be safe at work, but the added efforts she made to protect friends, family, and even total strangers from contracting any hint of the virus she might have been carrying through a casual contact at work or elsewhere.

“I am in healthcare and I double mask all the time,” Davis said, sharing information she also posted as a hopeful advisory on social networks.

“I am neurotic about sanitizing my rooms and keeping my patient safe, and for the safety of others, I do not wear my uniform in a store out of common courtesy,” she continued. “I do not wear my shoes in the house and I put my clothes in the wash the second I come inside — and take a shower.”

After nearly six weeks, and as coughing fits continued to punctuate her phone conversation, Davis is still left to wonder how she was infected.

“How could this happen? I am the safest person I know,” she stated. “Was it someone in the store who sneezed without a mask on and a droplet got in my eye? Was it the day I ran out of hand sanitizer in my car? We will never know. But what I can tell you about COVID is you’re fine till you’re not.”

Davis does count herself as very lucky, not just because she survived the virus — albeit with lingering related health issues — but because the medical system she works for assigned her a COVID-19 nurse specialist once she was diagnosed, and helped her access a negative pressurized room and a study that involved Davis being treated with high doses of steroids, plasma antibodies from a COVID patient, and Remdesivir.

“I do believe this saved my life,” she said.

Turning A Corner?

The lead-up to her hospitalization once she began exhibiting coronavirus symptoms was also frightening.

“Breathe, they say — walk, drink. But you can’t. At my worst, there were a couple of times I didn’t think I was going to make it,” Davis said. “Once this devil enters your body you can’t move. The pain is unbearable. You take all your strength to just breathe.”

Davis said she only has vague snapshot moment recollections of the first two weeks, and thought she might be seeing some light at the end of the dark tunnel of COVID symptoms when her 103 degree fever broke.

“Yay, I’m turning the corner, so I thought,” she related, but the next day she said, “I woke up gasping for air. My oxygen levels were in the 80s — I was hypoxic. I thought I made sense, but my COVID nurse knew better.”

So it was off to the hospital, and fast.

“My poor husband drops me off at the door of Bridgeport Hospital, but he can’t come in. So I tell him we will call him later,” Davis said, and as she approached the entrance, “a security guard comes running towards me, and with tears streaming down my face I yell ‘Stop!’ — doubled-masked, mind you — ‘I have COVID.’ He asked my name and said they have been waiting for me.”

Davis would later learn she was in respiratory failure and suffering with her first bout of COVID-related pneumonia.

The next thing Davis recalled was a team of PPE-wrapped front line medical providers taking care of her. With IVs dripping and oxygen to supplement the needed supply she was struggling to intake, Davis was sent for chest X-rays, then a CAT scan. Within 24 hours, she was being prepped to go into the study.

“I think the scariest moment, as they were shooting me with the first course of steroids, was when they asked me, ‘...if you code, do you want us to administer CPR.’ I looked at them and asked, ‘Am I that bad?’ But the answer was, yes,” she said. “It was such a scary experience, and it was compounded because your loved ones can’t be with you.”

After recovering to the point where she was discharged, Davis returned home to recuperate, only to contract bacterial pneumonia. She has since joined an online COVID-19 support group, but its members are not doing much to assuage her concerns moving forward.

“There are some long-term side effects that don’t seem to be getting a lot of attention from the medical community,” she said. “I’m just concerned they don’t know enough yet.”

‘Most Amazing Town’

An important side note: Davis said she is not the only person in her household who is imminently concerned about stemming the transmission of the virus.

“My beautiful daughter, Jackie, started sewing for the front line, and with so many Newtowners and other people throughout the state, supplied over 6,000 masks to hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, and homeless shelters, including doctors offices like mine. So you now understand how seriously we take COVID and keeping people safe.”

Davis, who is president of the Newtown Bridle Lands Association, is also looking forward to getting healthy enough to return to her equestrian and environmental pursuits. And she has a message for all the friends, neighbors, and family members who reached out to help.

“I live in the most amazing town there ever could be,” she said. “Besides all the folks bringing me food and checking on me, they helped with my animals — including strangers I never met. It’s so heartwarming to know we live in such a beautiful, amazing, loving town. It really is.”

Looking back on the experience, and still grappling with the after effects of her two bouts with pneumonia, Davis said she is convinced that if every person takes just a few simple, daily measures, that the risk of transmitting COVID-19 will be hampered significantly.

“I am sharing my story so that I may help others,” Davis said. “Please, I beg you, put a mask on. I have a long way to go to be healthy again but I know I will get there. Together we can stop this.”

Any resident or Newtown Bee reader who would like to discuss their coronavirus experience for possible inclusion in this series is invited to e-mail Associate Editor John Voket at john@thebee.com.