‘I’m not going to wake up tomorrow.’ Young Biloxi dancer shares his COVID-19 story.
In the dark of night, as he struggled to breathe, Josh Burchette wondered if he would see another day.
The young, healthy dancer from Biloxi had never been so sick.
Burchette, 33, is still recovering from COVID-19. The new coronavirus struck his mother and father, too. They all live together in Mobile.
Burchette is telling his story because he wants other people to know just how bad COVID-19 can be, even for a healthy young person. The family almost lost his father, who has underlying health issues.
“There were times I couldn’t breathe,” the hip-hop dancer told the Sun Herald in a telephone interview this week. “I would break down. I would think, ’This is it. I’m not going to wake up tomorrow. I’m not going to be able to hug my girlfriend, I would not see my brother.
“There were times when I would think I was not going to make it through the night.”
Shelter in place too late
Burchette and his family were all sick by the time Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey issued a shelter-in-place order April 3. She had been trying to balance health and commerce, the Montgomery Advertiser reported, but finally conceded COVID-19 cases were rising too quickly.
The order came too late for Burchette’s family. His mother developed a fever in mid-March, about a week after she visited a Biloxi casino with a friend. Both of them would later test positive for COVID-19.
When his mother got sick, there was no testing yet in Mobile, Burchette said. But his family knew about the virus and he took it seriously.
His mother was diagnosed with an ear infection and given antibiotics. She also developed a cough, sore throat and high fever. Both she and her friend would later test positive for COVID-19.
Burchette’s father, a manager at a cellphone company, started working from home and was taking care of his wife. But then he got sick, too. He was coughing, and suffering from fever and a congested chest.
Burchette, a contract dancer until three years ago at Boogie Nights club at Hard Rock Casino in Biloxi, had been preparing for a national dance competition in Nashville and working as a freelance dance teacher. The hip-hop dancer had to shift priorities.
He wound up taking care of both his parents. His parents slept a lot. His father’s congestion worsened and he began having trouble breathing. He had to go twice to the emergency room, the second time in an ambulance.
An antibody test on the first trip to the ER had not shown that his father was suffering from the virus. The test shows only whether the immune system has developed antibodies to COVID -19. On his second trip to the hospital, Burchette’s father was tested for the virus and tested positive.
He was put on oxygen in intensive care, but never went on a ventilator.
“My dad was in really bad shape,” Burchette said. “We were close to losing him . . . He was just fighting to stay alive. There were nights where he thought he was going to pass away.” Burchette’s father asked for last rites more than once, his son said.
Dancer struggles to breathe
Burchette’s mother was getting better, but Burchette had started feeling ill April 1. He was talking on the phone with his girlfriend in New Orleans when he started getting chills. He went to lay down and woke up the next morning with fever.
By the time his father was admitted to the hospital April 5, Burchette had a bad cough. The next day, April 6, he noticed his sense of smell was off, one of the lesser-known COVID-19 symptoms.
“Even nature smelled really rancid to me” he said. “It was really weird at first. I would step outside to get some fresh air and it would smell just really awful.”
It was also on April 6, after his dad had tested positive, that he and his mother were finally tested for COVID-19. Both tested positive, too.
Burchette went to the emergency room. He had pneumonia. He was treated with oxygen and sent home the same day with antibiotics and an inhaler.
He smeared Vicks VapoRub under his nose to help him breathe. Still, some nights he did not know if he would survive.
“I’ve never been sick like this before,” he said. “It was painful to breathe. I actually had chest pains, too, from the time I couldn’t breathe until a couple of days ago.”
COVID-19 changed Burchette
Burchette forced himself to eat, even through the worst of it, because he saw how weak his parents had gotten when they did not eat while they were so sick.
He is feeling better now, but still has to conserve his energy and use an inhaler. His dad came home from the hospital after about a week but still uses oxygen.
“I would like people to understand, this is not something you want to go through,” he said. “I wouldn’t wish this on anybody in the world.
“I’m a healthy guy. I exercise. I dance for a living. For it to hit me as hard as it did, it’s telling you something. Nobody wants this.”
Burchette said the virus has changed him.
Most of all, he said, “You just feel very fortunate to be able to breathe again.”
This story was originally published April 27, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
