New Love and Near Death (In the Time of COVID)
My friend Tom Ramsey is my favorite reason to go to New Orleans. I knew him back from my political days. Since then, he went into banking before returning to his first love, cooking. He’s a chef at a five-star restaurant, but lately that is the least-interesting thing about his life. Since the first of the year, he’s gained a daughter and nearly lost his life.
by Tom Ramsey
New Love
The brown-gray Mississippi Delta soil rolled by the window of the rented SUV as Alan and I drove north to a private dinner at a duck hunting lodge in Arkansas. Alan (the director of the bar program at Atchafalaya, the restaurant where I am a chef) had set up this gig which had us cooking a couple of meals and providing specialty cocktail service for a group of international businessmen in a multi-million dollar lodge in the middle of some of the best duck hunting land in the world. It was a nice respite from the 12-16 hour days in the restaurant kitchen.
As we exchanged our thoughts on Vonnegut, rye whiskey and Johnny Cash, the conversation paused when I answered a call from my oldest son, Stuart.
“Dad, I’m freaking out,” he said, breathlessly.
“Calm down son. What’s going on?”
“I got a text from some random lady named Jessica saying she’s my sister!” he answered, still frantic.
“OK. Take a breath and tell me exactly what the text says,” I said, trying to remain calm myself.
“It says, ‘Hi Stuart. I don’t want to freak you out, but I think we are siblings. I matched as a half-sister to Whitson Ramsey on 23 and Me,’” he read. “And she sent a screenshot of her 23 and Me account with a picture of Whit.”
“OK,” I answered. “Did she only match with Whit, and not with you?”
“I’m not on that stupid website!” he said.
“Alright son. This means one of two things. Either, One - I’m not Whit’s dad, or two – you have a sister. We can solve this mystery pretty easily. Send her a text back and ask her three questions. 1. How old are you? 2. Where were you born? And 3. What is your mother’s name?”
“Hang on,” he said, starting to calm down. “Oh shit! She’s responding. She’s thirty years old.”
“Alright,” I said. “She’s a year older than you which predates when I met your mother.”
“She was born in Hattiesburg…”
“We are checking some boxes here son.”
“Her mother’s name is [redacted.”
In a movie, this is where the frame would freeze on my face and the audience would hear the sound of a needle scratching and skipping across the record.
“Hmmm. That doesn’t ring a bell,” I said.
“What the hell dad? What do you mean?” he asked, incredulously.
“Well son, it was the ‘80s. I was in college. I was… popular. But it definitely looks like you have a sister.”
“What do we do now?” he asked.
“Hello and first of all, welcome to the family! I have so many questions. Where do you live? What do you do? Are you married? Kids? How did you find me?”
“First, let’s call your brother. Then we’ll call Kitty [my wife of 15 years].”
Stuart dialed his Brother Whit and brought him into a three-way call.
“Hey son,” I said. “I’ve got some wild news for you.”
I laid out the situation and how we came to discover it, and his response was perfectly on-brand for my son, the artist and teacher.
“Woo hoo! I’ve got a sister. Where is she?” he asked.
“We don’t have any details. I want to talk to Kitty first and then we’ll figure everything else out.”
“OK,” he said. “Call me when you know more.”
I told Stuart that I would call him back after my call with my wife.
Kitty answered the phone with her usual cheerful voice.
“Hello. Where are you and Alan now?” she asked.
“We’re just passing through Indianola. Are you sitting down? I have some crazy news.”
“Well… let’s hear it,” she said.
“Turns out, I have a thirty-year-old daughter.”
“What?” She exclaimed. “How did you find this out? Where does she live? What does she do? Is she married? Does she have kids? OH MY GOD, DO WE HAVE GRANDKIDS?” She asked in rapid-fire staccato succession.
“I don’t have any details yet. I’m going to reach out to her as soon as we get off the phone.”
“Well call me back as soon as you know something. This is so exciting!”
Again, just like Stuart and Whit, the reaction was 100% on-brand.
I called Stuart back and told him to give the young lady my phone number. I had nearly forgotten that Alan was in the seat next to me. I gave him a glance and a look that said “This is interesting.” He smiled and nodded in approval. Seconds later, my phone rang.
“Hi,” the voice on the line said, sheepishly.
“OH MY GOD, DO WE HAVE GRANDKIDS?”
I couldn’t hold back my excitement and erupted with questions. “Hello and first of all, welcome to the family! I have so many questions. Where do you live? What do you do? Are you married? Kids? How did you find me?”
As soon as she started talking, I could hear the relief in her voice. The sheepishness was gone and replaced with excitement. “I live in Sumrall, Mississippi, right by Hattiesburg, and I’m an ICU nurse in New Orleans. I work at the main campus of Ochsner Hospital. I’m married. No kids… yet.”
“You work in New Orleans? I live in New Orleans. This is fantastic!” I yelled into the phone. “But I just have to ask, how am I just finding out about you?”
“Well, I’m just finding out about you,” she answered. “A couple of years ago, I did the 23 and Me genetic test and it said that I was 99.6% European. I thought, ‘That can’t be right – Ken is half Japanese.’”
“Who is Ken?” I asked.
“He’s the guy that my mom said was my father. He hasn’t been a part of our lives, ever, but I’ve spoken with him and met him a couple of times. When I got the genetic test results, I asked my mom what was up. She said, ‘Well, if it’s not Ken, It must be this guy named Tom Ramsey. We met one weekend when Ken and I broke up. I got back together with Ken and couple of days later and a month later I found out I was pregnant with you. I just assumed you were Ken’s since I only spent the one night with Tom.’ When I found this out, I started looking for Tom Ramseys on Facebook and found a few profiles that I thought made good matches. I narrowed it down to your profile since the time in Hattiesburg matched, but I didn’t want to call you and possibly blow up your world in case mom was wrong. I mean, she was really wrong about Ken so I didn’t trust her memory. Then just recently I got a notification from 23 and Me that I had a new relative match. It showed your son Whit as a half-sibling. I tried to get his contact information, but his Facebook is pretty locked down. But it showed his brother Stuart and his Facebook is public and even lists his phone number [Again so on-brand] so I just reached out to him. And here we are.”
When she told the story about the weekend and the breakup, I instantly remembered her mom. We met at a theater company party after the closing night performance of Moliére’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme and she told me about her breakup the day before. She spend the night, and then I never heard from her again. The party was on the roof of the American Building, an old hotel in Downtown Hattiesburg that had transformed into artists’ studios, a flop house for carneys and a single floor of apartments for the bohemian set.
We talked for another 10 minutes or so and made plans to have dinner the following Monday, her next available night off.
When we hung up, I made follow up calls with Kitty, Stuart and Whit to pass along the information I had gathered. We were all full of joy and excitement at the idea and the reality of a long lost sister/daughter. I shared everyone’s contact information and made plans to follow up later that day.
With all of that settled, I put the phone down and looked over at Alan.
“Well. This trip just got a lot more interesting. Tell me about what I missed on the other side of those phone calls,” he said dryly.
We arrived at the hunting lodge, met our host and set to the work of unpacking and setting up for the work. Our first night, the host insisted on cooking for us and we relaxed in the giant, log-constructed manse and tucked in to osso bucco and great bourbon.
At dinner, Alan said to the table of 12 international businessmen, “Tom had an interesting day…”
Near Death
Stuart and Whit wasted no time getting to know their new sister. Within hours of the initial phone calls, Whit had invited Jessica and Caleb to join him and Katie for dinner. He figured that since they only lived about 20 minutes apart, there was no reason to wait six days to meet. At dinner he told her, “You know this 23 and Me thing has really wrecked some families with surprise children uncovering affairs and stuff, but I have to tell you, you’ve pretty much hit the estranged-dad PowerBall. My dad is this big, super-loving goofball. You’re about to get a big dose of Tom Ramsey, and I’m not sure anyone is prepared for that.”
Monday the 18th of January seemed to take forever to arrive, but after six days and dozens of tearful and joyous phone calls, the time had come to meet. We had arranged a dinner at our home in the old Algiers Point neighborhood of New Orleans. Nearly the whole family was on hand to meet the guest of honor. Stuart and his girlfriend drove in from Biloxi, Mississippi, and Whit and his wife Katie volunteered to drive Jessica and her husband Caleb to the party from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He thought it would be helpful to her to arrive with someone from the family she already had met.
My son Zak and I went to El Gato Negro in Gretna and picked up a ridiculous amount of tacos, chips and salsa for what we had decided should be a socially distant picnic in the little park behind our house. Kitty packed a cooler full of margaritas. Meeting Jessica was like seeing a strange reflection. We hugged and cried and hugged some more. Then it just felt like a family picnic. There was obligatory laughter at my dad jokes. It just felt so familiar and right. After the picnic we went back to the house for a quick bit of “It’s a Girl!” cake that my niece Sarah had sent us in honor of my new daughter. Jessica got to see pictures of her family and we marveled at how much she looked like my mother. Not wanting to congregate indoors for too long, and knowing that everyone needed to get on the road to return home, we exchanged more hugs and tears and made plans to get back together soon.
Everyone returned home safely, and Kitty and I marveled at how comfortable everything felt and how Jessica and Caleb jumped right in to our crazy family without fear or hesitation. I went to sleep that night with just a bit more love in my heart.
On Tuesday, I felt a bit of a sinus headache.
On Tuesday, I felt a bit of a sinus headache, but ignored it until Wednesday morning when my sinuses were completely blocked and my head was pounding. I called the restaurant and told them I was headed to the urgent care clinic for a checkup and a COVID test, my ninth.
The nurse took my temperature and said that I was running a fever of 101.9. She swabbed my nose and left the room. When she returned with Dr. Nguyen. They were both in full PPE.
“Shit.” I said, under my breath.
“OK, Mr. Ramsey, you’ve tested positive for COVID-19.”
Dr. Nguyen walked me through what he wanted me to do, which consisted of staying hydrated, taking a course of steroids, and watching my breathing for worsening symptoms.
“Shit.” I said again, much louder once I was in my car and headed back home.
Immediately I called the restaurant to let them know the situation. I hadn’t been there since Sunday, so they were probably in the clear, but they sent the whole kitchen crew out for rapid tests just to be sure. Luckily they were all negative.
Once back home, I let Kitty and Zak know and sent Zak to the pharmacy. Kitty had already had COVID back in March 2020, so we figured she was safe. Zak had it just a few months ago, so he was safe, too. I then started calling everyone I had seen since Sunday. Luckily it was a short list, but unluckily it was everyone in my immediate family. Jessica and Erin had gotten both of their vaccine shots, and Katie had gotten her first. To be safe, everyone, including Kitty, Zak, Erin, Jessica and Katie went to get tested.
“I’m a modern day Typhoid Mary.”
As the day went by the positive cases started racking up. Stuart, Whit, Caleb, Kitty and Katie – all positive. Only Zak, Jessica, and Erin escaped uninfected.
“Shit,” I thought. “I’m a modern day Typhoid Mary.”
That week, we stayed in close contact comparing symptoms. Everyone was different. Whit had terrible sinus pain and pressure with a moderate cough. Stuart had a terrible cough and fever. Katie’s symptoms were milder, but with her asthma, we were watching her most closely. Caleb had headaches and sinus issues. Kitty and I got sick with a capital “ick.”
We had fever, coughs, headaches, sinus blockage, loss of smell and taste and shortness of breath. On the seventh morning, my shortness of breath was getting worse and I felt like someone had reached in and just pulled out my batteries. Jessica had sent us a pulse-oxygen meter and warned us to watch for anything 85%. My reading was 77% and hers was 84%. It was time to go to the emergency room. Zak, who had been staying at a friend’s house around the corner, drove us to the Westbank Campus of Ochsner Hospital. When we got to the triage nurse at the emergency room, Kitty’s oxygen was still at 84%, but mine had fallen to 70%. I was brain-fogged, light-headed and exhausted. They wheeled us both to a bed in the ER and put me on supplemental oxygen. After a chest x-ray and a check from the doctor, they informed me that we were both being admitted to hospital. Within a couple hours I had gone from standing in my kitchen to laying in a hospital bed with wires on my chest, and IV in my arm and an oxygen tube in my nose. I assumed that Kitty was in the same shape but had no idea since they had put us in separate rooms.
By the end of the day, thanks to a sympathetic Charge Nurse, I got to see that she was in better shape than me when she was moved into my room. Her face was the best medicine I could have imagined at the time.
It was time to go to the emergency room.
After a day and a half, Kitty was well enough to go home, but my condition was getting worse. I had developed COVID Pneumonia and my oxygen needs were increasing. I quickly went from getting 4 liters/minute to 12 and then to 20. By the forth or fifth day (they started to run together) it was up to 30 liters. The respiratory therapist changed me from a cannula (the little rubber hose under your nose) to a mask that loosely covered my nose and mouth. That was my worst day so far. The mask was loud and uncomfortable. It dried my mouth, throat and sinuses and prevented me from sleeping at all. The next day I was operating on no sleep for 36 hours. I was exhausted and getting sicker. They brought in new machine called a Vapotherm that mixes air with warmed water vapor and blows it at higher velocity. My oxygen needs had outstripped the maximum I could get through regular in-room methods.
Soon after they hooked me up to the Vapotherm, the doctor and the respiratory therapist came into the room and informed me that I was getting transferred to the ICU. They didn’t want to alarm me so they explained that I was just requiring more oxygen than they were allowed to give me in a regular room. They said that the maximum oxygen they could give me in a standard room was 20 liters and I needed just a little more than that. My mind was slightly at ease as I was wheeled down to the ICU.
In intensive care, my movements were greatly restricted. Instead of a wireless rig monitoring heart, breathing and oxygen, I was directly wired into a monitor next to my bed. I still had an IV in each arm. I wasn’t allowed to use a real toilet and was reduced to a urinal jug and a portable chair that I dubbed the “thunder bucket.” I was suspicious when I learned that I had been switched to liquid diet. The nurse told me it was “just a precaution in case I had to be intubated.” There it was, the word I definitely didn’t want to hear – intubated.
Now I was frightened. They kept increasing my oxygen, 30 liters, 40 liters, 50 liters, 60 liters. The respiratory therapist was reassuring, but the evidence was clear, my lungs were getting worse. Then a new development reared its head… leg pain. They did a sonogram and found clots in both legs and put me on IV blood thinners and compression socks. They warned me that too much movement could dislodge the clots and cause a heart attack or stroke.
Now I was frightened.
The fear kept rising, but I had to keep up a brave face. I had visitors every day, and those hours were precious. I felt obligated to keep up a good front so as not to frighten my family and friends, but I’m sure they could see through it.
On the fourth day (I think, they all ran together) the respiratory therapist told me they were going to try something to prevent the possibility of intubation. They increased my oxygen to 70 liters and put me on a BiPAP machine. It’s a device that forces oxygen rich air through a mask and then creates negative pressure to help with exhaling. Typically they are used for sleep apnea, but the therapists thought the device would help open my lungs so instead of just wearing it at night, they put me on it 24 hours a day except when I was eating.
It was a little uncomfortable, but I could tell it was making a difference. I grew accustomed to it and tolerated it well. The notable exception was the second night when I woke up tangled in my wires and IVs. The mask felt like it was suffocating me and I had a full-blown panic attack. I pulled off all the wires from my chest and was struggling with the mask when the nurse came in. She was calm and kind. She eased my panic and talked me off the ledge. I lost it and just broke down sobbing. I abandoned the brave front and just confessed my fear to a kind and sympathetic ear. I just kept repeating, “I’m so scared. I don’t want to die.”
She reassured me, patted my back, ordered a Xanax and sat with me until I was calm and fell asleep. Two days later my oxygen stabilized and they started swapping out the Vapotherm with the BiPap on a 50/50 basis. It was looking like I might be turning a corner.
“I’m so scared. I don’t want to die.”
Another day later I was sitting up in the bed after eating my sad, liquid breakfast, watching the news and once again I got the feeling that someone had just pulled out my batteries. My vision blurred and my head got light. There was a ringing in my ears and my breath was labored. I hit the nurse call button and slumped in the bed. The nurse rushed in, put the BiPPAP on me and took my vitals. I was running a fever. They lowered the bed and laid me on my side. I fell sound asleep. Some hours later I woke up soaked in sweat from head to toe with a painfully full bladder. I cleared the cobwebs, emptied my bladder and called for the nurse to help me change clothes. When I was fully awake I felt better than I had felt in days. My oxygen saturation was at 99% so for the first time, they reduced my supplemental oxygen. The following day I was back on a regular diet of solid foods and two days later I was transferred back to a regular room on just 10 liters of oxygen. Within 48 hours, I was headed home.
So here I am. At the house with my beautiful wife and ridiculous cats. I’ve got a wheezy machine that supplies me with 1.5 liters of oxygen and tanks like the ones you see next to the old ladies in the casino as they smoke and pull the arm of the slot machine. The doctors call my recovery “remarkable” and tell me just how sick I was. They told me that they were convinced they were going to have to put me on a ventilator and were gravely concerned that once on the vent, I might not make it off. Every time I moan or complain about the fact that I can’t drive or ride my motorcycle or return to work, they remind me that just a few weeks ago I was on 70 liters of oxygen and a liquid diet.
I’ve still got a long road of recovery ahead of me. Like 1950’s football, it’s a game of inches. And I’ve got miles of inches to go. I’ve got a new daughter and an old family and they all give me the strength to move through those inches and grind out the miles.
Tom Ramsey is the chef at Atchafalaya Restaurant in New Orleans. Tom appeared on the premiere episode and the “Supermarket Masters Tournament” of Guy’s Grocery Games on the Food Network; made it to the quarterfinals on Season Three of ABC’s The Taste; and was featured on Appetite for Life and Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. Follow him on Twitter at @ChefTomRamsey.
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