In March 2020, the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mehran S. began feeling very sick and had trouble breathing. “I was getting worse and worse and worse,” recalls the 59-year-old business owner. His wife eventually brought him to a nearby hospital, where he got little help, so he went home.
When his condition was even worse the next day, his wife took him to UCLA’s Century City urgent care clinic, where he was given a chest X-ray.
Minutes later, after having seen the X-ray results, Anuradha Seshadri, MD, approached Mehran and told him he most surely had COVID pneumonia and was seriously ill. But Mehran barely heard the doctor, because he fainted.
Mehran was given oxygen and an ambulance was called to transport him to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center where he was admitted to the intensive care unit and intubated. Mehran’s memory of the next three weeks in the hospital is still fuzzy.
Although it was later discovered that Mehran’s wife and two children had contracted COVID in these early days of the pandemic, only he was severely affected by it, in part because of his diabetes, which put him at a higher risk.
Mehran’s recovery was slow and difficult, and Dr. Seshadri tracked his condition while he was hospitalized. COVID medications were so scarce at times that Mehran’s son drove to San Diego to get one type that his father needed. Doctors placed Mehran on his stomach to help him breathe, and at one point his survival was in question.
“You know, it was a very horrible experience,” Mehran says.
Grateful for his doctors
As he emerged from the crisis, “I couldn't walk and I couldn’t talk,” he says, but he was profoundly grateful to the doctors who helped him. “They really did a good job and I'm so glad that I was in the UCLA hospital.”
He went home to his family determined to do what doctors told him to regain his health.
Dr. Seshadri, as a primary care doctor and pediatrician, treated Mehran’s wife and children who all had mild cases of COVID. She says she enjoyed the continuity of care this created. “This is why I became an internist as well as a pediatrician,” she says. When she could not see Mehran, Dr. Seshadri was pleased to hear updates about him from his family.
The first days after a patient in Mehran’s condition is discharged from the hospital are critical, says Dr. Seshadri.
“This is where it's really important to stay in touch with the patient because lack of follow-up can cause problems and issues,” she says. “Being in touch with this patient and making sure that he followed up with the right specialists was important.”
A comprehensive care team
Mehran was told to see a lung specialist, a cardiologist, and an endocrinologist who could treat and monitor his diabetes, and lingering symptoms such as fatigue. He slowly began going back to work.
“He had an entire care team,” says Dr. Seshadri. “And this is where I would say that at UCLA, even on an outpatient program, we come together as a team and we maintained his health through these different specialties. And since 2020 he’s come a long way.”
Dr. Seshadri emphasizes the importance of the trust doctors at UCLA Health work to establish with patients.
“Part of that trust is making sure that the patient feels independent and yet motivated enough to go to all of these appointments,” she says. “After going through an episode like he did, he is now being so responsible — he makes sure that he goes to all of his appointments, gets his blood work done, gets his imaging studies done, and maintains that good health.”
Mehran appreciates this medical attention. “Dr. Seshadri, I call her my angel,” says Mehran. “She's very caring about me. She makes me follow up which, after having COVID, I need.”
“It's a pleasure to take care of him and his family,” Dr. Seshadri says. “I try to really inspire patients to take charge of their own health and feel motivated to do so. It’s very rewarding for us physicians when that happens.
“That’s the true gift, to be able to provide somebody with good health and maintain that health, and also give that inspiration to a patient to say, this is my body, this is my health, I need to keep track of it,” Dr. Seshadri says. “It’s also about having that trusting relationship, and (Mehran) trusts every single one of his physicians. I think this experience at the hospital was life changing for him.”
