Her little girl was throwing up blood but mom believed to have COVID-19 can't get kids tested

This story has been updated to correct the nature of the test that Cherriese was given. It was a nasal swab, not a blood test.

Cherriese, a 32-year-old Hilton woman, starts with the good news. Her two youngest children, 1 and 4, seem to be recovering.

She couldn't get them tested for COVID-19, the deadly virus sweeping around the globe, even after they were both racked by diarrhea, sore throats and headaches. Even though the baby boy, born with a heart defect, cried in pain every time he coughed or laughed. Even after the 4-year-old girl said it felt like her heart was broken and she needed help fixing it.

And even after a nurse at Strong Memorial Hospital told Cherriese she almost certainly has the virus. Her own nasal swab is somewhere in a long queue to be tested, but X-ray and MRI images of both her lungs show the characteristic, spidery white blotches.

Cherriese's heart felt broken, too. She tried to describe the pain in her chest, but metaphors failed her.

"I went from one day just having this stabbing pain in my heart to waking up the next day and feeling like my chest caved in," she said. "I felt like I had an airway passage in my throat that was clear, but my lungs wouldn't let me breathe or inhale, like there was cement on top of them.

"I don't know how else to explain it. It's like pressing, burning, stabbing — all at the same time."

Cherriese, who asked that her last name not be used, is in quarantine in her home in Hilton. She doesn't know when the lab test will come back, or how exactly the virus reached her family.

Tests considered low priority are being turned around at the public health laboratories in two to five days.

"I've been around people who know I (have it), and because they feel fine, they're still going out," she said. "They're out right now. ... There's a lot of people who are not symptomatic who are walking around with the virus, and that's how it's spreading.

"One moment I thought I was OK, and the next moment I didn't think I was going to make it."

'I couldn't breathe'

It began March 7 during a tea party at the Danforth Community Center on West Avenue in Rochester, when Cherriese's 4-year-old daughter complained of a sore throat.

She and her younger brother were ill for several days before their symptoms abated — temporarily, it turned out. In the meantime, Cherriese started having chest pains.

She went to Unity Hospital on March 16 and received the COVID-19 test. They told her she would receive the results the following day, but she didn't.

While she waited, her children's condition declined again. Her daughter was now throwing up blood.

She still couldn't get them tested. "We have to prioritize," a supervisor at Unity told her on an audio clip that Cherriese provided.

A Rochester Regional Health spokeswoman could not comment on a specific patient's case but said the hospital began in-house testing March 14.

So Cherriese turned to what she had at home: echinacea, ginger, turmeric, cinnamon, flaxseed. She made them herbal teas and rubbed them down with essential oils, wild orange, frankincense, myrrh. She put peppermint on her son's chest to try to help his breathing, then held both children until they fell asleep.

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"It didn't seem like much," she said. "But by some miracle — my kids are known to bounce back amazingly strong — when my daughter woke up, she said her throat didn't hurt anymore." Her son, too, seemed better.

"After that happened, I was happy about the kids, but I couldn't breathe myself," she said. "Me, personally, I thought I was going to die."

Disarray and no list of contacts

Cherriese drove herself to Strong Memorial Hospital on March 18 so as not to risk infecting others in an ambulance or ride-share. She found the lack of masks disturbing and her impression was one of general disarray.

Once doctors looked at an image of her lungs, they changed her room from a double to a single.

Cherriese was sent home with a suite of prescriptions and a reminder to keep isolated for 14 days. She's not sure what to do after that.

"It is plausible that a patient would be told they likely have COVID-19 and prescribed proper treatment for that while test results are pending, if conditions with similar symptoms have been ruled out," a URMC spokesman said while declining to comment on her specific case.

No one has asked her for a list of people she's been in contact with over the last month, she said. Some of them have gone to hospitals for a test and been denied.

The Monroe County Department of Health did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday afternoon.

Cherriese is keeping isolated in one room of her home, away from her husband and four children. She worries about spreading the virus to them through fabric or dishes or anything else she touches.

After her experience seeking testing and treatment, she has come to rely upon a handbook assembled by a team of doctors in China who responded to the initial outbreak of the pandemic.

Cherriese comes from a family with a proud tradition of patriotism and military service — her husband is a Marine — and it pains her to see the United States failing its citizens in a time of need.

"My whole family is born and raised in America," she said. "I just believed that, if China could take care of their people, that we could do an even better job. I truly believed that."

Instead, she said: "I feel like I was chosen to go through this. I had a moment in the hospital ... when I was like, 'Maybe this is how I'm going to die.' And I had to accept that and stop being scared. ...

"I'm scared for everybody. I don't mean to alarm people. I know people already have anxieties about what's going on. But people have to stay inside."

Contact staff writer Justin Murphy at jmurphy7@gannett.com or at 585-258-9886. This coverage is only possible with support from our readers. Sign up today for a digital subscription.