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#MeToo Founder Tarana Burke Details Partner’s Feverish Fight With COVID-19: ‘Folks Need to Be Prepared’

”The last two weeks of my life have been some of the scariest,“ Burke shared on Twitter

#MeToo founder Tarana Burke shared for the first time that her partner was fighting COVID-19 for the past few weeks and explained how “scary” it was caring for him as he convulsed while his fever kept climbing higher.

In a Twitter thread shared on Thursday, Burke said she and her partner — an “essential worker” who works with the homeless — were first exposed in mid-March. Along with fatigue, headaches and a low-grade fever, Burke said her partner’s “skin felt like it was burning.”

On the fifth day, Burke said her partner’s fever spiked to 102.3 and they both went to the emergency room. “We were both admitted to the ER after being triaged in the lobby. He was dehydrated and had elevated blood sugar so they put him on an IV. They gave us both chest X-rays and the Covid test Face screaming in fear which is *brutal* (but fairly quick). He was positive and I was negative,” she wrote.

After they were both sent back home because Burke’s partner didn’t yet have any respiratory problems, Burke said she would stay up all night watching him breathe to monitor whether he was skipping any breaths. The next few continues continued to be worse, she wrote, as her partner barely had an appetite and his fever would spike at night.

“The worst was day 8 when his fever went to 102.9 and he began to have convulsions,” Burke wrote. “Just have to say this was the SCARIEST night because the pressure of making the wrong decision was overwhelming. Felt like one wrong move could kill him. I didn’t sleep at all.”

Since then, Burke said his fever has never gotten that high and is now “up and about,” albeit with a “horrible cough.”

“He’s not 100% but he’s much, much better. I don’t wish this on *anyone* as a patient or caretaker. It’s scary and hard and bc it affects everyone differently you just don’t know. I think folks need to be prepared with meds in your house just in case,” she wrote. “I just want folks to know it’s not just like a *bad flu* or cold.”

Read Burke’s full thread here: