My name is Charlotte Thompson and I go to Living Water Church in Bridgeport, WV.
It was on April 28, 2021, that my testimony begins. During this time, Covid-19 was everywhere. I was in bed sick with what I thought was bronchitis, which I’ve dealt with for years. The night before, my daughter and I had gone out to eat and had a good time together over dinner. The next morning, I was in bed. I didn’t think anything about it, because like I said, I thought it was bronchitis.
Usually, when I have this, I’m in bed for about three days. However, this time it was different. After the usual three days had gone by, I wasn’t getting any better and my husband wanted me to go to the ER. I didn’t want to go, thinking any day now I should start feeling better, but I didn’t. By this time, I wasn’t eating; I had no appetite at all. The thought of food made me nauseous. My not feeling well continued, with me getting weaker. So, after a week, I thought maybe I should give in and go to the ER, so I did. On May 5th, I was admitted. I was tested for Covid-19, and it came back positive. I waited in the ER for hours, as the staff were trying to get me into a room. I finally got into a room, only to find out that my sister had been admitted to the same hospital for COVID-19 as well, so she and I were on the COVID floor together. She had tested positive but had no symptoms. As for me, I didn’t know just how sick I was but was about to find out. The doctor started right away with an IV and put in a nasal cannula because my oxygen levels were low.
I continued to be weak and didn’t eat at all. They would bring me a tray of food three times a day, but I just couldn’t eat. I wouldn’t even lift the cover off the plate to see what each plate of food was. I just laid there and turned my head. This went on for week number two without eating. By this time, my regular doctor was seeing me often each day as well as three lung doctors. My oxygen remained dangerously low, so my doctor put me on a high flow oxygen mask that I was to wear around the clock, which was terrible. It was blowing high volumes of air in my lungs causing my throat to dry and I constantly had to ring for a nurse to lift the mask enough to let me have sips of water.
It was so much forced air going into my lungs that it was cold, and my nose felt like I was getting frostbite. I could only take it for three days and told the nurse to remove the mask and put the nasal cannula back on me. Even after the three days of the high-flow mask my oxygen levels remained low, so my doctor asked me if they could put me on a ventilator. I told her no. She asked me if I had a Living Will. I told her yes, but the hospital didn’t have it on file, so she asked me what my directives were. I told her I didn’t want to be put on life support and in the case of death, the only measures were to keep me comfortable. I said, “are you telling me I’m going to die?” She told me about all their efforts to try to get my oxygen levels up, but nothing was working but they would continue to do their best.
On Mother’s Day, she called my husband in to say goodbye to me because she told him she didn’t think I would make it through the night. He came in suited up as all the staff members had to do with Covid patients. He was so upset, and I was lying there continuing to get weaker.
What I didn’t know (and found out later) was my pastor, Jerry Fiscus, was in his car in the parking lot for hours praying because they weren’t letting anyone come in on the Covid floor. The only reason my husband was allowed in was to say goodbye to me. Pastor Jerry prayed, asking God to give me peace and for God to intervene. I also found out so many people from many places were praying for me.
Our associate pastor, Aaron Hewitt and some of the congregation stormed heaven doing spiritual warfare for me and didn’t accept that this was my appointed time and praise the LORD … it wasn’t! I lived through the night and things started turning around for me. I knew I was going to have to force myself to start eating to get my strength back. The only thing that remotely sounded good was a small scoop of mashed potatoes. I ate that for days until I could add more food to my diet, which I slowly did. At this time, my doctor was changed and now I had a different doctor. The three lung doctors were continuing to check on me daily. One of the lung doctors told me that I may have to be on oxygen for three months. Another one of the lung doctors told me that I may have to be on oxygen for life. The third lung doctor would come in and walk out, saying nothing. In the name of Jesus, I did not receive their reports. I started getting my strength back and feeling better. Thanks to my pastor’s prayer, I had the peace he had asked
God for, and I also had this strong faith that my lungs were going to be healed.
My faith was so strong that I declared to the Lord that by the end of the month (May), I would be totally off the nasal cannula for oxygen. Every day I was bugging my doctor as to when I could go home but he wanted to keep me through the weekend. I was so anxious to get home so I could rest better and exercise my faith for believing God about getting off oxygen.
My family had been instructed by me that no one was to let my elderly mom know my true condition because she unfortunately, is a worrier. She was so nervous at the thought of her daughters being in the hospital at the same time, she started calling me begging me to come home. I knew this was very hard on her, so one morning when my doctor came in to see me, I told him about my mom and what this was doing to her. He told me he wanted me to stay in the hospital through the weekend but didn’t want my mom to get down either. So, against medical advice (AMA), he prepared the paperwork to have me discharged that day. That was on May 18th. When asked how AMA would affect me, I was told that Medicare didn’t have to pay for my hospital stay. I was in the hospital for 13 days, and my bill was over $69000.00. I trusted the Lord for that, and He intervened! Praise God, my bill was paid! I was finally on my way home with the nasal cannula. When I got home, the hospital had set it up with a company to have this big oxygen tank placed in the bedroom. I walked around the house with a 50’ oxygen hose and still strong in my faith that I would be off oxygen. On May 30th, I reminded the Lord of what I had declared to him earlier by faith, so today had to be the day. At 10 a.m. I told my husband to turn my oxygen tank down. I started a log, so for each hour I would use a pulse ox and write down what my oxygen levels were. Each hour, my levels started to go up a little. I did this for 12 hours and my oxygen stayed up! I took the nasal cannula out and never had to use it again! I wasn’t defying wisdom, which I know the Word talks about, but I knew that I knew I was going to be healed and I had such peace when I told my husband to turn the oxygen tank down. When it is supernatural, human wisdom must step aside. My follow-up appointment with my family doctor was coming up so I knew I would have to tell him what I’d done. He’s a Christian but I didn’t know how he would react to me taking myself off oxygen. However, when I showed him my log, and that I was doing fine, he believed God had healed me. He had to be the one to officially release me from using the oxygen tank so that the company could come and pick it up. For the longest time he called me the “miracle woman” (he told me five of his patients had died from COVID-19 and that was before my appointment with him).
Then I found myself in another situation. On August 3rd, I was getting ready for work and while combing my hair, a lot of my hair came out. I, not knowing why this is happening, called my dermatologist the next morning and he saw me right away. I told him about being in the hospital with Covid. He stepped back, grinned and said, “I promise you won’t look like me” (he’s bald). What you have is Telogen Effluvium. Your hair will grow back but it will take a year. I thought it was such a strange name, so I looked it up. It’s a condition where a woman’s hair can fall out due to a stressful experience or trauma to the body. In my case, it was trauma to my body, which further showed the battle going on inside me with this virus attacking my lungs and heart. My hair started growing back and it took exactly a year as my dermatologist said it would.
I was raised in the church. When I was 19 years old, the Lord, through a series of events, brought me out of a Baptist church so that He could take me on a path of making Himself real to me. The very first thing the Lord did for me was to heal me. He healed eczema on my left hand. I hadn’t had eczema before, and I haven’t had eczema since but that is what He used. I praise the Lord, He’s the same yesterday, today and forever!
When I look back on all the many, many things the Lord has done for me … deliverances, healings, bringing me through storms, trials, mountains, dry times, sorrows … I can’t be surprised that He
delivered me from the death that could have been from Covid. I have a book that I’ve had for many years called, Hinds’ Feet on High Places, by Hannah Hurnard. It’s an allegory using a female deer (hind) dramatizing the journey each of us must take through dangerous and difficult places if we are to learn the secret of living life in high places. “The Lord God is my strength; and He will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and He will make me to walk upon mine high places.” (Habakkuk 3:19).