Oklahoma man left with hefty medical bill after COVID-19 treatment
CHICKASHA, Okla. (KFOR) – A Chickasha man is left with a hefty medical bill after receiving COVID-19 treatment.
58-year-old Shaun Alders contracted COVID-19 in January.
The bill he got about a month ago billed nearly $200,000. After insurance, he still has to pay about $13,000.
“It makes me feel like I’m buying a good used car that I’ll never see or drive,” he said.
Alders says in the beginning, the symptoms got worse quickly.
“I had a horrible cough, and I was just doing strange things and thought nothing about it. I’d tried to come to work, and I would go to sleep in vehicle before I could leave the house,” he said.
He had a friend take him to the emergency room.
“I actually flatlined in the ER, they resuscitated me,” he said.
He was in the ICU for ten days at Grady Memorial Hospital and spent another ten in a regular hospital room.
“I was in really bad shape, they gave me convalescent plasma, I think that kept off me off a ventilator, my kidneys were failing, respiratory failure, my lips and skin around me eyes were turning blue,” he said.
After that, he spent a month in a rehab facility.
“Learning to walk again, I lost about 40 pounds somewhere along the line, I didn’t have any strength, I couldn’t hardly breathe,” he said.
He says the rehab and oxygen stood out to him most on the bill.
“The oxygen was really high, I was on 6 liters of oxygen at one time, and it cost about 170 dollars an hour,” he said.
The vaccine wasn’t widely available when he got sick. He says his doctor is having him hold off on the shot, but he will get it when he can.
Alders says people can make their own decisions about getting vaccinated, but warns that his COVID experience was not pleasant.
“I think it’s a good idea to take it, because I definitely would hate to see people as bad as I was, go through what I went through, and to come out with a bill like that, it’s just no fun,” he said.
Alders says he’ll probably be paying off the bill for the next four or five years.
