BY KAREN BOSSICK
Colin Finnerty had what a young man might consider a dream job—scanning the lift tickets of thousands of skiers in exchange for a chance to schuss down Sun Valley’s steep ski runs.
But just a little over a month before the resort was to close, the 21-year-old woke up feeling as if he was coming down with a cold.
“It was the 10th or 11th of March,” said Finnerty, a ticket checker at the Lower River Run and Challenger lifts. “I didn’t think much about it—I had a scratchy throat, plugged nose. If anything, it felt like spring allergies.”
A few days later, he felt perfectly fine—fine enough to go to Boise with a friend. But the next day he was rocked by “the most violent cold” he’d ever experienced. He had difficulty breathing. He felt as if someone was sitting on his chest. He had unbearable nausea. He had a temperature of 104. And he had a migraine that wouldn’t respond to anything, not even the morphine that doctors gave him.
“I thought, oh my gosh, I might have this coronavirus thing everybody’s been talking about,” he said. “It was hard to fathom that I’d gotten it—I was young, healthy… I felt so panicked, delusional.”
Colin’s mother Mary Finnerty, a former hospital nurse who now works with Dr. Tom Crais, knew her son was dealing with the coronavirus as soon as he started complaining of difficulty breathing and a fever.
And on Sunday March 15—the day before Sun Valley Resort would suspend its ski season in face of the pandemic—she took her son to the emergency room at St. Luke’s Wood River. It was the day after the first case of coronavirus had been diagnosed in Blaine County.
“The symptoms mounted so fast. I couldn’t get him to the ER fast enough. Once there I started to panic, yet I had to be strong for Colin,” she said.
Doctors diagnosed Colin with bilateral pneumonia. When he tested negative for the flu, they swabbed him for COVID-19.
When his symptoms worsened the next day, Mary took her son back to the ER.
X-rays indicated that he had opacities in his lungs, indicating that the virus was attacking his lung tissue. Suddenly, it became paramount that doctors get him to pulmonologists in Boise.
At first, St. Luke’s was going to fly Colin to its hospital in Boise. But health care workers were able to stabilize him enough that they were able to transport him by ground ambulance, instead.
His mother Mary Finnerty had to stay home, unable to accompany her son because of the highly contagious nature of the disease.
“My heart sank when they told me, ‘You can’t travel with him. You have to go home and quarantine. We’ll let you know when he arrives,’ ” she said. “I drove home in tears and stayed up all night for days.”
In Boise Colin’s pulmonologist treated him as if he was positive, recognizing that Colin had the same COVID-19 symptoms that he had seen in patients in Washington State.
He proceeded with an aggressive treatment of medications like Plaquenil, an immunosuppressive drug used to treat malaria, and various respiratory protocols.
Lying alone in his bed was surreal, Finnerty said.
“At one point, I thought all these nurses were standing around me and I was trying to talk back to them. I opened my eyes and there was one nurse in a corner working on her laptop, not acknowledging me. I was talking to myself,” he said.
“I had E. coli when I was a child and I had a fever with that. But this was different. Having reality pulled away from me, I felt so strange. I felt like I was trying talking but no one was listening. I couldn’t express what I felt.”
What he felt, Colin said, was extreme fatigue. His body ached. His joints ached. His lungs were filling with blood, and he had blood in his mucus. He was in excruciating pain.
“It was the worst body pain you could have,” he said.
Back home in Hailey his mother tried to FaceTime with him, but it was difficult because her son was so ill. Needing to be reassured, she spent hours on the phone with Dr. Crais at all hours of the day and night.
“The days were long and hard with very little information, as I knew how overwhelmed ICU was. It was a waiting game,” she said.
It wasn’t any easier for Colin.
“I’m still at the age where I go to the doctor with my Mom—both she and my grandmother are nurses. She’s the one telling them my symptoms and asking the questions. So, it was so strange not having Mom at the hospital,” he said.
What’s more, Colin said, nurses were only allowed to enter his room at certain times—say, if he needed water or toilet paper—to limit their exposure to the disease.
“The only thing keeping me going was watching the sun set from my window every night,” he said. “I did have a great view.”
On top of everything else, Colin developed liver complications.
“That was a scary thing because they know so little about this disease right now that things happen that they can’t explain,” said Colin. “But they were drawing blood and I had a huge number of enzymes spilling into my blood. My liver was working so hard it was in danger. Kind of like cirrhosis of the liver, I guess. If it had gone on much longer, I would have had lasting damage.”
After six days in the hospital, Colin was released into the care of his mother, returning home on March 23. They received the results of his COVID-19 test after they returned home—10 days after he had been tested.
He was positive.
His mother is still awaiting the results of her test.
“I was so grateful for the how aggressive the doctors were in using meds to nip my pneumonia,” Colin said. “And I was so grateful to get into my mother’s car and know that I was being taken care of.”
Now, a week later, Colin says he’s feeling a thousand times better. It took a few days for his energy to start coming back—he can still tell he was very sick.
“I’ve hardly left my bedroom in the last five to six days. Every morning I just wake up, get dressed and put on my shoes just for something to do. It’s hard to go from having a full-time job five days a week and getting up at 6 in the morning to having nothing to do. And it’s not just having nothing to do but having no choice but to do nothing.”
But, he added, “I’m waking up every day, knowing that if it made it through what I made it through that I’m not going to have to deal with anything that terrible for a long time.”
Colin, who moved to the valley at age 11 after his family spent four years in Shanghai, worries that some still may not be taking the coronavirus seriously.
“What I tell my friends is: If you think you feel symptoms, get tested. And isolate yourself for 14 days. You need to take this seriously.”
Looking back Colin says, he wasn’t taking it seriously enough.
“I was told that if you’re young, you’re fine, you’re safe from the virus. So, I didn’t worry. But everyone’s at risk.”
What’s surprised him most is how terrible the disease actually is.
“I thought it was just a common cold. It’s not. This is a big deal. My life was on the line. And I was amazed how rapid it took hold and how violently ill I got. Fortunately, what the news is telling people today is 180 degrees different from what they were telling people three weeks ago. So, maybe people are more aware now.”
Mary says it’s crucial for parents to have an open dialogue with their children to make sure they understand how important it is to follow such protocol as hand washing and social distancing.
“I can’t say enough about the incredible staff at St. Luke’s in the Wood River Valley and Boise—they saved Colin’s life,” she said. “I think about everyone affected minute to minute, with such perspective and positivity. I know we can make a difference in containing this. But it’s crucial right now to get serious and follow through with what we need to do.”