Patient zero: A story of faith, hope and love in STHS’s COVID-19 unit

Mike and Lois Bergeron are pictured Wednesday, April 22, 2020, at their Mandeville home. Mike Bergeron was the first COVID-positive patient admitted to St. Tammany Health System’s main hospital campus. After 16 days in the ICU, he also became the first to be sent home. (Photo by Tim San Fillippo / STHS)

By Mike Scott, mscott@stph.org

You can describe Mike Bergeron in a number of ways. The 67-year-old Mandeville resident is a businessman. He’s a family man. He’s a man of deep, unshakable faith.

Over the past several weeks, however, a couple of noteworthy new ways to describe him have emerged.

On March 10, Bergeron became patient zero at St. Tammany Health System, the patient with the first diagnosed case of the COVID-19 coronavirus at the Covington-based hospital.

Even more importantly, on March 26 he became the first COVID-positive patient to go home after being admitted to the hospital.

The struggle that played out in those 16 long days and nights in the hospital’s critical-care unit is a story of determination on Bergeron’s part and, by his own description, of medical heroism on the part of the STHS doctors and nurses who cared for him.

It’s also, however, a story of love, compassion, faith and, perhaps above all, hope.

This is how Mike Bergeron – businessman, family man, church-going man – also became a survivor.

‘LIKE A LIGHT SWITCH’

It was the last Tuesday of February 2020, and all of New Orleans and the surrounding region were in the throes of Mardi Gras, the annual weeks-long blowout before the solemn 40-day observation of Lent.

It was a perfect day for a party, with beautiful weather luring untold thousands to the French Quarter and the traditional parade routes in communities throughout South Louisiana. The shoulder-to-shoulder nature of the annual celebration also, however, made it a perfect day for an epidemic to take root – which is how New Orleans would become a U.S. hot spot for COVID-19.

Mike Bergeron, however, wasn’t among those teeming, costumed masses.

He was at work, attending a leadership conference in Orlando as a regional sales manager for Stanley Security, a division of Stanley Black & Decker.

That, he suspects, is where he became infected. But one of the most insidious characteristics of COVID-19 is how long a person can be infected without showing symptoms, unknowingly spreading the virus for days before even realizing they’re sick. For Bergeron, it took four days after his Wednesday-night flight home from Orlando before it hit him.

When it did, though, it hit him hard.

“It was really like a light switch,” he said. “Fever kicked in, chills kicked in, compression of the chest kicked in, weakness kicked in. And I just went straight to bed – under three or four blankets.”

As bad as he felt, he didn’t consider that he might have the new coronavirus that had only showed up in the United States a little more than a month before. More likely, he was told during a visit to a local urgent-care clinic not affiliated with STHS, it was probably the flu. Possibly pneumonia.

He was prescribed a corticosteroid and told to go home and see how he felt in a week.

“So we came home, but he wasn’t getting any better,” Bergeron’s wife, Lois Bergeron, said. “He was really struggling to breathe, so we called his doctor and they said, ‘You’ve got to call 911. He’s in respiratory distress.’”

Mandeville EMTs rushed him to the Emergency Department at St. Tammany Health System’s main Covington campus. There, he was asked if, among other things, he had done any recent traveling. When he mentioned his Orlando trip, both he and Lois said, it was clear a red flag had gone up among the hospital’s staff.

“That’s when they figured it might be the COVID,” Lois Bergeron said.

SPRINGING INTO ACTION

In truth, St. Tammany Health System had been waiting for Mike Bergeron.

On Jan. 1, while COVID was raging in China but more than two weeks before the first U.S. case had been diagnosed, STHS Director of Infection Prevention Leslie Kelt said the hospital’s team had already begun considering what to do if, or when, a local case cropped up.

By early March, they had even conducted unannounced drills at the Emergency Department, with Kelt herself posing as a person who – complaining of flu-like symptoms -- had recently visited Iran, another early global hotspot for the disease.

So, while Bergeron was the hospital’s first potential COVID patient, plans and procedures were already in place well before his arrival. When he was brought to the hospital, the Emergency Department immediately set about implementing those plans.

They isolated him in a negative-pressure room, designed to ensure air flows in but not out, to reduce the risk of airborne contamination of areas outside the room. They donned the nearly head-to-toe personal protective equipment that has since become standard for caregivers treating COVID patients.

“They didn’t mention COVID to me at that point,” Mike Bergeron said. “They, I think, wanted to spare Lois and I the anxiety of what that notion might bring about. But they were clearly, clearly ahead of the curve in terms of diagnosis.”

Bergeron noticed more doctors around his room at that point, but there was no sense of panic among them.

“They said, ‘Well, we’re going to admit you for the night,’” he remembers, chuckling with the knowledge that he’d end up spending days there.

They also ran a battery of tests on him to rule out everything outside of COVID-19. When those tests all came back negative, they told Bergeron they were going to test him for the novel coronavirus. He still wasn’t overly worried, though. He felt sick, but he was sure he’d be home in a day or so.

Two days later, while he was still in the hospital, the results came back.

“I think it might have been (Dr. Richard) Casey came in,” Bergeron said. “He said, ‘Well, you know, it’s what we thought. It’s positive.’ But there was not a hint of anxiety in his voice. There was complete confidence.

“He said, ‘You’re the first patient in St. Tammany (Parish) Hospital to be confirmed with COVID-19. I don’t know what that means to you, but to us it means we’re going to give you great care and, frankly, we’re going to learn together in this process, so work with us.’ And it was just inspiring to have someone with that degree of medical expertise be so candid and open.”

‘WHAT A BLESSING’

Bergeron admits he harbors a competitive fire, whether in sports or in business. And when it comes to his family, Lois Bergeron said, he’s a flat-out fighter.

“He loves his family so much,” she said. “He wasn’t going to leave us.”

But if you ask him what one thing made the difference in his case – what he summoned from inside himself to beat a disease that continues to claim thousands of lives every day around the world – he doesn’t hesitate before answering.

“I first have to give credit to God,” he said. “I really, really do. I really believe in my heart of hearts that through prayer from members of our church and our family and folks around the country who were alerted and prayed for me, that a medical team was assembled in St. Tammany that was off the charts in terms of their compassion, their focus, their readiness to serve, their self-sacrificing nature.

“I think the encouragement the medical staff gave me – whether it was Dr. Casey or Dr. (Ricardo) Blanco or Dr. (David) Cressy or all the nurses that I had, who were just amazing -- I think their encouragement made a huge difference.

“When they came into that isolation room, one at a time, I could only see eyes because of the masks. But in those eyes, I could see compassion. I could see folks who were so centered on my well-being and my recovery that they honestly encouraged me beyond measure. It was tremendous.”

His face still lights up when asked about those nurses, all of whom volunteered to care for the critically ill patients in the hospital’s COVID unit. And they didn’t just care for his body, Bergeron said. They provided a level of emotional support to him and to Lois that he said makes them family to him.  

“We talked together. We prayed together. We read Scripture together,” he said. “In the course of (providing) world-class medical care, they were my contact with the outside world. They were my contact with humanity, because that isolation factor begins to wear on you a little bit. But I was excited every time they came into the room. I was stimulated. I felt good. I felt happy. It was an uplift. Those people are remarkable.

“They put themselves on the back-burner. They put their families on the back-burner. They put their personal well-being on the back-burner so they could take care of people like me. And, my goodness, did they. Oh, my goodness. What a blessing.”

THE CHAMP

Those 16 days in intensive care weren’t without their difficult moments.

At one point, in case they might have to resort to a ventilator to give Bergeron’s battered lungs a rest, doctors broached the topic, explaining the potentially life-saving technology. Lois wasn’t so sure, though. So she prayed it would be used only as an absolute last resort.

It would get close over the days that followed, but it would never get to that point.

Eventually, it became clear that Bergeron was stronger than COVID-19.

The day he was set to be discharged, the hospital’s ICU staff surprised him by forming a phalanx outside his room. As he was rolled past them all in a wheelchair, they applauded.

“I had no clue what was going on,” he said. “And then I realized they were applauding me. I, of course, choked up. I was applauding them. It was just one of those moments. And then I realized what Dr. Cressy had told me the day before: ‘You’re the first one in, but you’re the first one out, and you’re going home healthy.’”

Somebody was playing music. It was the theme from “Rocky.”

He had gone 12 rounds with coronavirus, and – while he had taken a beating, and even now is still working his way back to full strength – he came out on top.

For their role in that fight, he said, he will always be grateful to the team at St. Tammany Health System.

“These people are wonderful,” Bergeron said. “Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. I can’t wait to be able to go back and see folks and shake hands and hug and personally thank. And, really, how do you thank? How do you thank those individuals? How do I thank St. Tammany Hospital? How I can I ever thank them? How can I repay?

“I’m just grateful. I’m so very grateful. And for our family, it’s not even a matter of choice. If an issue arises – God forbid – we know where we’re going. Because we know the quality of care we’ll receive when we get there.”

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Visit STPH.org/COVID-19  for the latest information on coronavirus in St. Tammany Parish.