Surrey music teacher released from ICU shares COVID-19 experience

SURREY (NEWS 1130) — Darlene Lourenco still can’t hum or sing, but the beloved Surrey music teacher can breathe, and is grateful to be back at home after being in the ICU due to COVID-19.

“I’m still sick. I came home with a little COVID still left in me but I’m breathing on my own, and I’m starting to walk around a bit so I’m doing better,” she tells NEWS 1130 in an interview Thursday.

“I do love music. I sing all the time, it’s like breathing for me and I honestly can’t sing a note. I’ve tried for days now and nothing comes out.”

The 55-year-old says when she woke up on Nov. 6 she immediately knew she had contracted the virus.

“I woke up coughing, couldn’t really breathe very well. It was a sudden stark change. It was clear,” she explains.

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The symptoms, combined with the fact that Cambridge Elementary where she teaches had issued a number of exposure notices made her all-but-certain she would get a positive test result.

“There had been quite a number of cases, many in the same class that I would teach several times a week, and we were all really carefully watching for symptoms,” Lourenco explains.

That school was ultimately ordered to close for two weeks after an outbreak was declared by Fraser Health.

The following day she got the test results, and a few days later had to be admitted to hospital.

“I could barely move, I couldn’t stay awake, I couldn’t eat and my husband called the ambulance and I was taken away,” she says.

“The most immediate thing I needed was oxygen.”

Lourenco says each time something changed during her two-week hospital stay, she was gripped by fear.

“I was scared every step of the way, scared to go in ICU, scared to come out of it, and scared to come home, frankly, as excited as I was. Every change is really abrupt.”

While she was in the hospital she was either sedated, or unconscious and had no idea that a GoFundMe had been started to support her and that the Cambridge Elementary community had come together to rally behind her recovery.

“I was clueless until I came home about the enormous support, and I just I’m surrounded by an amazing community of colleagues and students and families and I feel so blessed and lucky to be working amongst these folks,” she says.

‘I really want to go back to school, but I do want to feel safe’

Lourenco teaches in a portable, one of 12 at the school. Different groups of kids come in and out over the course of a typical day, which causes her to worry about the possibility of another exposure.

“Portables don’t have running water, we don’t have sinks, or bathrooms. We do have hand sanitizer at the door. But I see nine classes a day of very young children and they’re back-to-back classes, there’s no opportunity in between classes to wash up, to clean, to sanitize surfaces that are highly touched,” she explains.

“It’s a lot of bodies that come through my room.”

Teaching amid the pandemic has brought a whole new set of worries into the classroom.

“I’ve never really had to do my job where I’ve been afraid of hugs, and zipping up children’s coats, and putting on a bandaid. I’ve never had to be afraid of these things before, they were just part of the job. everything changed with COVID,” she says.

Whether she will go back to school remains to be seen.

“It’s pretty evident to me that it’s going to take me a little time to feel healthy again. I’m a slow healer, once I’m fully healed I’ll have to make that decision whether I feel like I can come back to school,” she says.

“I really want to go back to school but I do want to feel safe. I don’t want to go through this again.”