Beating the odds: one woman's story of surviving coronavirus

On June 11, 2020, a beautiful flower bloomed somewhere in Japan.

That same day in Colorado, Gunbarrel resident Beniko Olsen drove home with her family after 45 days in the hospital fighting for her life after contracting COVID-19.

But first, she directed her husband and two sons to stop off at Starbucks for a long-anticipated Matcha latte.

Olsen is a petite woman with a radiant smile and a joyous laugh. In her late 60s, she worked for over 20 years as a teacher's aide at a local preschool while raising two boys. Now retired, in her spare time she helps create plantable seeded paper with wildflowers and vegetable seeds and cooks for visiting professional marathon runners from Japan.

She walks regularly and professes that she loves to bake, cook, and eat. A healthy individual with no pre-existing conditions, she was about to face a battle with coronavirus that would take her to the brink of death-and back again.

It was near the end of April in 2020 when Olsen first began feeling under the weather with a fever and chills, but she wasn't sure whether or not to go to the hospital thinking she might just have the flu. At the time, as Colorado was just beginning to see the first spike in coronavirus cases, medical providers were cautioning people against visiting the doctor unless it was absolutely necessary.

"It was very confusing. So I was waiting and getting worse," said Olsen.

When Olsen finally decided her symptoms had worsened to a point that she needed to see a doctor, things had gotten drastically worse. She was having trouble breathing and decided to head directly to the emergency room in Boulder.

At the ER, she was first diagnosed with pneumonia and later with COVID-19. Over the next week, she was given three plasma transfusions. But her condition quickly went from bad to worse and on May 11, one day after Mother's Day and 13 days after first being admitted to the ER, Olsen was placed on a ventilator before being transferred to a hospital in Aurora for additional medical intervention.

From this time, Olsen said she has few memories, but one stands out clearly for her from a day in the Boulder hospital when her two sons, Andy and Carl, had come to visit her, one from Seattle and the other from Fort Collins. But as visitors were not allowed in the COVID ward, her husband, Bob, and sons stood outside in the parking lot where she could see them from the window. Though they weren't able to see her, Olsen snapped a photo of them from the window and sent them a text to let them know she could see them and was waving to them from her window.

After that, her memories of what happened during the next two weeks are mostly absent-she doesn't remember the transfer to the Aurora medical center or the medical procedure that the doctors took to try to save her life. On May 11, Olsen was placed on an ECMO machine.

In ECMO, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, blood is pumped outside of the body into a heart-lung machine. The machine effectively functions as an external lung, removing carbon dioxide and pumping rewarmed, oxygen-rich blood back to the body.

Used in critical care situations, ECMO is often a last step measure. By bypassing the heart and lungs, these organs are allowed to rest and hopefully heal. Patients are placed into a medically induced coma while the machine does the work of their heart and lungs.

Olsen was on ECMO for eight days. From this time, she has memories of detailed hallucinations of what she calls an "unbelievable strange world" that included a bubbling floor, vivid colors, a doctor telling her family she had died and a fear that people had forgotten she existed and left her to be experimented on in a hospital in another country.

She also has certain memories that blur the boundaries between hallucination and reality, like a memory of hitting a male nurse in the back as he sat at a computer in an effort to get his attention. And a memory of pleading with a nurse to please allow her to die.

Meanwhile, her family and friends, both in the States and back in Japan, where her brother and sister live, were unable to see her. Her husband was not able to hold her hand. Her sons were not able to stand by her bedside. Apart from her medical providers, she was fighting this battle alone.

One day, she recalls being in the room with no one at the nurses' station. "It was completely empty. I thought, okay, I'm going to die here. I didn't panic," said Olsen. In that moment of calm, thinking she was facing death alone, she started talking to the ceiling, telling all her family how much she loved them and her sons how proud she was of them.

Luckily, the lung-heart machine worked, and her lungs began to recover. On May 19, Olsen was removed from ECMO and placed back on a ventilator. At this point, she had been in intensive care at two different hospitals for 27 days. Her lungs took the brunt of the beating, and she was incredibly weak. Already a small woman, she had lost 10 pounds and barely had the strength to lift her arms. Even once she made it past the tenuous days of healing on ECMO, she still had a long journey of recovery ahead of her.

On May 24, Olsen was taken off the ventilator, and two days later, she was able to see Bob, Andy, and Carl on a video call from the ICU. "I will never forget those three boys' smiling faces," she said.

Two days after that, Olsen was moved to a private room on the rehab floor where she was scheduled every day for a long line-up of therapy-physical therapy, respiratory therapy, speech therapy, and occupational therapy.

From the many days of being intubated, all her muscles that controlled speech and swallowing had atrophied and her throat had been damaged. She had to relearn how to swallow to make sure that her food went "down the right pipe" which was especially important as she couldn't risk getting liquid into her still fragile lungs. For many days, she ate bland food like mashed potatoes and jello-a depressing prospect for a food lover-until her therapists gave her the green light to eat and drink more normally.

She also had to learn how to maneuver in a new-to-her-world, one with oxygen tanks, tubes, and the very real dangers of an unintentional fall. In rehab, she mastered how to load and unload a laundry machine with a walker. She practiced maneuvering around a kitchen with an oxygen tank. At that time, everything she did required assistance from a nurse or nurse's aide. When she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror, she could barely recognize herself. When she finally was able to shower for the first time since going to the ER, she said it was heavenly.

Olsen said the hardest part of that time was the isolation. Apart from her time with her therapists, she spent the rest of the time alone in her room. Bright spots for her were video chats with family and friends, watching old NFL games on TV, and soaking in the view of the mountains and Pikes Peak from her hospital room window.

"It was so boring, 24 hours, seven days by myself. I couldn't sleep very well. I felt it was very hard, mentally, to be myself. I wondered how long I could do this," she said.

Then she got some good news. On June 1, she was cleared to have an in-person visit from family; one person per day could come to see her. "That gave me so much hope and freedom, mentally. It was like open windows and fresh air surrounded me. It helped me to be normal. It was wonderful news," said Olsen.

As it was late in the day, she didn't expect her first visitor until the next morning, but Carl surprised her by showing up that afternoon. "I will never forget. It was a wonderful moment," said Olsen.

Andy came the next day, and Bob the day after. Olsen said she will always remember the feeling of getting to see each of them again.

It took Olsen 14 days in therapy for her to finally pass all the tests to "graduate" to going home. On June 11, she left the hospital in a wheelchair to the ringing of a bell and the happy congratulations and high fives of her entire health care team, exiting the hospital into the arms of her waiting family. And her first stop was to the Starbucks on the corner that had taunted her out her window for two weeks to get her celebratory Matcha latte.

Back home, she was greeted with a giant pink welcome home banner signed by friends and neighbors. When she was feeling strong enough, she set up shop in the driveway with a six-foot marker so that friends and neighbors could stop by and say hello.

Her recovery once back at home continued to be slow and is still an ongoing process. She still feels short of breath and weak some days. Other days she has anxiety about going back to the hospital. But she said, with tears in her voice, she is so thankful for every day and thinks often of those who weren't as fortunate as her.

Certain things stand out to Olsen when reflecting on her experience. The strength and love of her "boys" as she calls her husband and sons. The kindness of neighbors, near and far, sending her meals via Meal Train while she was still too weak to cook. The blissful comfort of her own mattress in her own room. The compassion and skill of all the medical workers who took care of her-even the ones she can't remember and never met from her eight days on ECMO. And the power of prayer and well-wishes from friends and family who couldn't be with her in person but were with her in spirit.

Since regaining her strength, she walks nearly every day.

"Just little things like walking at the lake, watching the beautiful mountains and birds on the frozen lakes, or watching the boys playing cards and laughing makes me cry. I get so emotional sometimes. It is great to be alive! My family and friends prayed so hard for me that saved my life. I live for them and families who lost their loved ones," said Olsen.

In September 2019, Olsen took a trip to Japan to visit her family and attend her school reunion. At the reunion party, she handed out the seeded paper as gifts to her long-time friends and classmates, many of whom she had known since kindergarten. That year, well before anyone knew what was coming in 2020, her friends planted the seeds and started watering them.

After coming home from the hospital when Oslen finally checked her email, she found messages from these friends and classmates, separated by distance, but connected by greater ties. Her seeds were growing and flourishing even as Olsen lay fighting for her life in the hospital.

One friend told her that they thought about her every time they watered their seeds and prayed for her return to health. Another friend sent her a photo of beautiful flowers that blossomed the same day that Olsen returned home from the hospital.

"Beni in Japanese means deep red. I see those flowers as red. It's a kind of connection, from just a piece of paper that I gave them, that gave me great hope and encouragement," she said.

Olsen's recovery is still ongoing and each day is different with different challenges, but she feels very fortunate and happy to be living.

"I'm just so very grateful, every minute. To see the mountains and lakes. To be with family. I am so grateful. And I think about the people who did die or who lost their loved ones every day," she said.