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Pictured: Jon Cesario Jr. with bathroom through Aubrey and Zachary Foster Jr. holding Anthony Cesario. Photo through Luis Chavez.
by Kimberly Rivers
We have read the statistics and heard about the many threat points that make an individual more vulnerable to coronavirus infection and COVID-19 disease that it causes. However, the more we live through the pandemic, it becomes more and more transparent that the virus does not discriminate and that no one is immune. Jon and Shantel Cesario of Ventura know this very well: the total circle of relatives was inflamed by coronavirus. The good news is they all survived. But the other people in the C-section hope their fun will help raise awareness of how this disease can have an effect on any of all ages.
Jon, who was born and raised in Ventura, is a life coach. He said that to cope with the next month, he had to “put into practice some of what I teach.”
He said it all around 9:30 p.m. July 9. “My wife called me on FaceTime. She cried hysterically.”
Shantel had called his doctor because he had a high fever and told him to go to the hospital. Jon promptly returned home to care for three of his children, aged seven, two, and three weeks. (Jon’s 11-year-old son with his mom at the time and did not contract the virus.) Shantel went to the hospital in Santa Paula.
“It was the first time he had to say goodbye to the two babies,” Jon recalls.
He tested for coronavirus and was monitored all night, only to be released at four a.m.
“The doctor told us it was appropriate to breastfeed,” Jon said. The next day, Shantel won the call that tested positive for coronavirus. “We started telling people. ArrayArray so everyone knew it was positive for COVID. He said it was a very small organization of people, basically members of the family circle, with which he had been in contact. Shortly after Shantel returned from the hospital, the aubrey boy developed symptoms.
“Two hours later, our three-week-old daughter had a high fever. ArrayArray is harmful to a newborn. They called their doctor, who told them to go to Santa Paula Hospital. Jon took Aubrey and “they found us outside, escorted us to the back and a room.”
As Shantel had tested positive and Aubrey had a high fever, the hospital assumed the baby also had COVID-19. They started trying Aubrey.
“He had a lumbar test, with a needle in his spine. She had to lie down in the crib position,” Jon recalls. She cried hysterically. He must have been in excessive pain.
Staff identified the severity of the baby’s illness and an immediate ambulance transfer to Ventura County Medical Center (CMVC), where Aubrey entered the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
The rest was meant to last only one day. Finally, Jon spent five days there with his daughter. Aubrey began to revel in respiratory disorders in addition to high fever. Doctors needed a longer stay; they didn’t know what would happen to someone so young with COVID-19.
Jon praised VCMC for its rigorous coverage procedures, noting that “staff take 15 to 20 minutes to get dressed and dress” when they enter and leave Aubrey’s NICIN room. They also trained him to do much of the follow-up and procedures to restrict the number of other people who have to enter the remote room. She had to complete a roadmap, write down important symptoms, and other information about her daughter.
“At the time at night, she began to have abdominal problems … COVID began to attack your digestive system … she cried and had a rash everywhere,” Jon said. He cried hysterically for 8 hours straight. I was looking for her. I was rocking it. There was nothing I could do because of the pain I was experiencing. My priorities were in place. Nothing was more vital [except] that he recovered. I prayed, Lord, give me this, give me this. I felt powerless at the time. I admit I was crying.
He said a nurse had to look at the cameras in the room and saw that he was struggling. “It was their free time, after a 12-hour shift, they returned her to her position and brought a tablet,” Jon said.
The nurse put on Baby Mozart music and showed her how to wrap the baby and use a thermal pad to tuck it in. “She still fell asleep.
“I don’t know who this nurse is. ArrayArray his colleagues told him “that’s it,” Jon said with his turn. “But she said to them, “Don’t worry, I’m where I want to be.” ArrayArray is pretty good. I want to go back and locate that nurse. ArrayArray I would love to thank you.”
Aubrey had been “breastfed from day one,” but due to her hospitalization and her separation from her mother, Jon had to insert a bottle. “At first it was a challenge, but thank God he took the bottle.”
Staff examined Aubrey’s oxygen, urine and blood levels to make sure he didn’t have brain damage due to fever, and put it on the ivy. A suspected bacterial infection that was discovered to be a contaminant in a test.
“She was the only baby at the time that tested positive,” Jon explained. “Nurses did not delight in such small babies with a positive check; it was a little scary.” He was told that they would “do everything they could to pay attention to the symptoms, but we can’t do anything with the virus.” It’s too new, we don’t know how to do it. And they told him they had to let the virus run its course. “It was terrifying news to hear a doctor tell him he couldn’t do anything.”
After five “exhausting” days, which Jon said “looked like two years,” Aubrey stepped forward enough to be sent home in solitary confinement, with strict orders to return if symptoms worsened. Fortunately, the baby continued to improve.
While baby Aubrey was fighting COVID-19 in the NICU, his mother worsened.
The day after her baby entered VCMC, Shantel developed a high fever and returned to the hospital. He suffered from headaches, breathing problems, loss of taste and smell and excessive fatigue.
“You might get a little out of bed and still have to take care of our 2-year-old son, who had similar symptoms,” Jon recalls. Although she was only in the hospital one night, she still had symptoms when she was discharged. “The scariest thing is that if my wife had never been admitted to the hospital [initially], our check would not have returned [for 15 days]. ArrayArray and I had no symptoms and interacted with several other people [through work].” Thank God we detected it early.
All members of the family circle finally tested positive for coronavirus. Jon and his 7-year-old son were asymptomatic; the 2-year-old had a high fever but had no other symptoms. After they were all discharged from the hospital, the family circle joined a strict quarantine at home.
“For 14 days, we camped in our house,” Jon explained. Because I had intelligent health in a different way, it’s possible that I just “intervene and take care of my family.”
During the ordeal, friends, a circle of family and members of the Ventura Missionary Church and the New Life Church brought them food and meals. “It’s encouraging to see that our network [offers help],” Jon said.
The family circle needed it.
Even though Shantel was home, he had trouble breathing. “My wife has had the most difficult and demanding situations with COVID and we have started looking for other studies.”
They accessed online data and have noticed a steroid-based respiratory remedy called Pulmicort Respules (R), which is usually used to treat asthma. According to Jon, it was used in Japan, which experienced a low mortality rate similar to COVID-19.
“Our doctor was on board,” but when a member of a family circle tried to retrieve the prescription from a local pharmacy, “they rejected it first.” ArrayArray was dazzled. This can only help her, she can’t breathe. “Your doctor had to” write a letter asking for “the drug and the pharmacy filled the prescription.
Jon stated that his insurance refused to cover the cost of the drug, so they paid it out of his own pocket, as well as the respirator to administer the drug.
“Two days later, she’s recovering, ” he said.
They are sure if the drug was what helped them, but they were satisfied with receiving this treatment. According to Jon, about 10 days after home quarantine, “everyone stopped feeling symptoms.”
Doctors told Cesarians that after 14 days, “even if we were no longer contagious, the virus could be dead in our formula for up to 12 weeks.” But they were exonerated on July 24. They were also told that the new check was not necessary, but they did it anyway (on the loose check site at Oxnard College) and all had negative results. Jon said all Caesarians had been in contact with negative checks. Shantel has yet to regain his sense of taste and smell, however, it is the only lasting effect that someone in the family circle has detected so far.
Recalling the ordeal, Jon felt she had had an exclusive affair with her baby at the NICU, but wondered about her occasional episodes of violent crying when she embraced her: “Does she sit down at the time, when I go out to hug her? Your?”
C-sections still don’t know where or how they contracted the virus. Jon stated that the circle of relatives had not gone anywhere and that the small cohort of other people they were in contact with came back negative.
“The only thing we can think about is when we gave birth in the hospital, but it’s speculation,” Jon said.
All nurses and doctors were wearing protective devices for childbirth. But Shantel has evolved after eclampsia, the highest blood pressure after birth (a rare condition compared to preeclampsia, the highest blood pressure before birth, which resolves regularly after delivery). The drug he was given had no effect, however, “at the time he had a high fever, [the postclampsia] disappeared.”
Jon said getting coronavirus in the hospital is “the only thing that makes sense to us.” ArrayArray It’s imaginable that I gave this to my circle of relatives as well. That’s scary.”
While Cesario’s circle of relatives practiced social estrangement, wore a mask, and wore hand sanitizer, Jon admitted that they believe that any of them are unlikely to be in danger of contracting the virus. They feel like others now.
He hopes that his fun will help raise awareness of the truth of the virus and its impacts. He said many members of his network “thought it was a hoax.” But after what he and his circle of relatives went through, he saw that he “really woke up to our network that this is real.” Until that happened, they didn’t. ArrayArray We took each and every precaution not to get it, and still hit our house. You can be contagious without even knowing it, that’s the scary component of everything. He fears that others may be asymptomatic and do not know that they have the virus, and do not wear a mask or social estrangement.
“Maybe it’s a credit for us to get it,” Jon said. “He created awareness in the community. ArrayArray which is real, this virus is real”.
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