Singer who gave birth hospitalized with Covid-19 in Manaus completes 400 days in hospital

Hours before being intubated for complications caused by Covid-19, Amazon singer Eva Rodrigues, 40, wrote a letter to her husband, Sol Petrus Praia, 24, in which she exposed her fears: “Pray that God heals me immediately” , was the last sentence she could write.

Since then, there have been 16 days of intubation, followed by a series of complications that resulted in a tracheostomy, two cardiac arrests, 20% of the lungs compromised and a series of infections.

This Sunday (7), Eva completes 400 days hospitalized for Covid-19 sequelae and is preparing to finally be discharged from Samel Hospital, in Manaus, where she spent the last 13 months.

She arrived at the hospital on January 3, 2021, contaminated amid the second wave of Covid-19 cases that left deep scars in the Amazon, including deaths from lack of oxygen in hospitals.

When she arrived at the hospital, Eva was pregnant with her third child, Ethan, who was born on the first day of admission in an emergency cesarean section, when the mother was 38 weeks pregnant.

Under the circumstances, little Ethan did not feel his mother’s warmth nor was he breastfed. It was up to his father, Sol Petrus, to accompany his son at the Ana Braga public maternity hospital.

Due to the lack of structure in the place, Sol set up a task force and with the help of her bosses and friends managed to transfer Eva to the ICU of a private unit, where she remains hospitalized.

“We didn’t imagine that the hospitalization would last so long. Even because, at that time, the patients either healed or soon died”, recalls Sol, while listening to one of Eva’s compositions. The couple played in churches, events and taught singing and instruments.

Used to hearing the woman’s voice singing her praises since 2017 – the year they met and started dating – the musician had to live with the sounds of the equipment of an ICU (Intensive Care Unit), where Eva was taken on the 7th of December. January.

He was studying electrical engineering, was teaching guitar at the evangelical church he attended with Eva and was an intern at a factory in the Industrial Pole of Manaus. Along with this, he also began to dedicate himself to the care of the woman and the newborn.

“Not in my worst nightmares could I have imagined going through what I went through and still go through. We had a routine, we did everything together and that’s how I wanted to stay forever. But then this tragedy happened in our lives. It’s very painful to see my son developing without mother’s presence”, he says.

A first-time father, the musician needed to learn everything about babies. He’s the one who takes Ethan to pediatric appointments, for vaccinations, and he’s the one who prepares his son’s bottles.

“Eva is a great mother, she already had a couple of children, Noah and Yvilah. At first it wasn’t easy, we went through difficulties and faced prejudice due to the age difference and because she already had two children. But we got married, we all went to live together and we planned Ethan”, he says.

In the bedroom, photos of the couple decorate the shelves. Although Ethan, the youngest child, has no contact with his mother, Sol says she doesn’t let the baby forget about her for a day. “I show him the pictures and he’s already learned to say ‘mommy’. He may not understand what she means to him, but he knows she is his mother.”

Between nights sleeping in the hospital, work and his son who recently turned one, the musician managed to finish college in December last year and was hired by the company where he was intern.

In addition to being a singer and songwriter, Eva studied journalism and liked to write. It was in the ICU, without contact with her family, that she asked for a pen and paper to communicate with her husband. “I’m in a state of nervousness, even with sedatives I couldn’t sleep. Right in front of me, the same woman has already died three times”, she reported in an excerpt from the letter.

One of Sol’s wishes is also to make the woman’s talent recognized: “When Eva’s painting was controlled, I started looking at our compositions, watching the videos we recorded and feeding our channel. Eva was a woman of a lot faith and spent her life teaching singing. She spent her life being creative and talented. I can’t let that die.”

Amid so many procedures, two cardiac arrests and countless seizures, Sol says he hasn’t given up hope of getting his wife out of the hospital alive. When Eva completed five months of hospitalization, doctors talked about the possibility of palliative treatment at home.

Friends made a crowdfunding to renovate the family home. With the money raised, the musician redid all the electrical parts, adapted the bathroom, managed to buy nobreaks, beep and a folding hospital bed.

Last Wednesday (2), Eva left the ICU and was transferred to a hospital apartment, for what the medical team calls the adaptation period. She is expected to go home in February.

The coordinator of the ICU at Hospital Samel, Dirce Costa, explains that the patient lived for eight months with infections caused by pseudomonas bacteria, acquired while still in the maternity ward.

“We tried for months combinations of antibiotics and nothing worked. Until a new medication arrived from abroad and we managed to control it. Today, Eva has no more infection, she has pulmonary and neurological sequelae, but she is ready to go home”, she says.

The challenge for the family now will be to maintain the structure of both personnel and material that Eva has available at the hospital. But, like Sol, the specialist believes that after discharge, Eva’s neurological recovery will take place quickly.

“She is conscious. She cries when her husband needs to leave. She turns her face away so she doesn’t see him leaving. We believe that returning to living with her family, whatever can be recovered in her health will be easier and faster. , as it is a young patient.”

For the doctor, what kept Eva resilient during this time was her family’s persistence and love. At Christmas 2021, Sol got permission and took little Ethan to visit her mother.

“They want her anyway. Our ICU is humanized and there wasn’t a day that they weren’t with her. They never gave up. Even when we doctors gave the negative reports, they didn’t lose faith or hope. Now it’s here. It’s time for Eva to go home.”