COVID in rural America: Farmers, Ranchers are susceptible, too

Gene Dubas was on his way to Amarillo, Texas for a trade show, to exhibit chutes and cattle equipment when he just didn’t feel good. It was November 9, and he’d had a fever that morning. A cold shower lowered his temperature but he still didn’t feel good. So he stopped for a quick COVID-19 test, knowing if he had it, he didn’t want to give the virus to anyone else. The test came back positive, so he headed back home to Fullerton, Neb., where his two businesses: Dubas Cattle and Dubas Equipment, are located. For the next week, he didn’t feel good and hurt all over, with terrible headaches. His temperature would be in the 104 degree range, but he stayed home, thinking it would go away. Then, on Nov. 16, he couldn’t take it anymore. His son drove him to the emergency room in Albion, Neb., where they put him on oxygen. Two days later, a visiting pulmonologist read his lung x-rays and recommended he go to a bigger hospital that had access to COVID-19 survivor plasma and antibodies and a high flow oxygen machine. He had stressed to the Albion hospital staff that he did not want to go on a ventilator, after having a bad experience with one after a trauma accident in 2013. He told the helicopter team the same thing. They listened, but Dubas sensed he may not have much choice in mid-flight. On the flight, the tight quarters in the helicopter bothered him, and he told that to the male nurse. The nurse, to put him at ease, asked Dubas what he did for a living. When the nurse disclosed that his parents owned a feedlot in northeastern Neb., Dubas realized he had delivered a chute to them in April. The two visited throughout the forty-minute flight, which caused his oxygen levels to be better than when they had left Albion. In Hastings, he was in ICU for nine days. Out of those nine days, he spent nearly every waking minute using the spirometer, the plastic instrument used to check the depth of a person’s breathing. Dubas had had experience with one, and knew that his ticket out of the hospital was how well his lungs performed. “All I did in my spare time was blow on that thing and blow on that thing,” he recalled. “Believe me, it hurt like hell to blow in that. You have plenty of time to think about living or dying and you have plenty of time to make that choice.” The doctor commented several times that Dubas’ work ethic of using his spirometer helped his lungs improve and helped him get better...MORE