By Eva Metis Koutoumanou
Recently, I had the joy and the honour to speak with Mr Nick Letsios, General Manager of Kia of Huntington and profound member of New York’s Greek community.
Although he is a businessman with many achievements, our interview did not focus on his entrepreneurial success but on his successful battle against the worst, yet invisible, enemy that the whole planet is battling, Covid-19.
Couple of weeks ago, Mr Letsios felt a slight weakness and his body temperature was a little bit high, not above 100° F (37.5°C). In his house, he was prudent enough to have one of these devices that measure the oxygen in our blood, a pulse oximeter, and that warned him that the weakness he felt could have been something more serious.
With the personal responsibility that we all have to show these days, Mr Letsios went to the hospital where, unfortunately, his fears proved to be true, he was diagnosed positive to Covid-19.
In the hospital, he stayed six days and after that he was sent home. Once again, Mr Letsios made it his duty to protect everyone until he was 100% certain that it was safe to meet other people. He isolated himself in the basement of the house. Luckily, as he said with a smile in his voice, the basement is a pleasant area with windows, so it wasn’t that bad. However, despite his isolation, his family got infected by the virus. Luckily, the symptoms were very mild and none of them needed special medication or hospital care.
But Mr Letsios wasn’t that lucky. Few days after he returned home, his health condition turned so bad that he had to go back to the hospital and be once again hospitalised because the first time he didn’t fully recover from the virus.
Fortunately, Mr Letsios has fully recovered now as he managed to win the fight with the monster called Covid-19. He has returned to his daily routine, back to his business and his family.
However, there are few important lessons to be learned from Mr Letsios’ story. First: the most important weapon at the moment against Covid-19 is personal responsibility. It is us who have to make sure to test ourselves if we feel sick, even if it is just some weakness or unwellness that we might think is unimportant.
In the event that we don’t feel well, we have to make sure not to contact other people. If Mr Letsios was not that responsible and careful when he was first discharged from the hospital, even after his short quarantine at home, he could have contacted dozens of other people before realising that he has been discharged early. It is our duty not to contact other people when we feel unwell or when we fear that we might have been infected with Covid-19.
The second lesson is that yes even doctors may sometimes make mistakes. Don’t forget the gigantic battle they give every day, their mental and body fatigue, the countless hours they work, the uncountable number of patients they treat every day, the limitless stamina and courage and strength, both mental and physical, that they have to show every day for us, they are the true front line warriors in this battle. Along with them, by their side, we have to do our part to help them.
Each one of us must check our body temperature and the oxygen levels in our blood when we feel unwell and we have to put ourselves immediately in voluntary self-isolation until we feel completely healed and healthy. Only if we protect ourselves and the people around us, we can help the doctors and the nurses, who fight tirelessly every day with admirable self-sacrifice, to win the Covid-19 battle.
Finally, we have to trust the simple advices and follow three basic yet crucial instructions: keep distances, wear face masks and wash our hands thoroughly and often or use antiseptics. These are three very simple measures that we all can and must follow until we manage to restrain and finally defeat Covid-19 with the vaccines. Because we will defeat it! We just have to do it all together.
