Some young people without underlying health conditions are dying of coronavirus. drsanjaygupta explores why that might be -- and what to do if you're worried
When 30-year-old Ben Luderer started to feel sick, he wasn't that surprised. Just a few days earlier, his wife, Brandy, had tested positive for coronavirus, but there wasn't much to it.
All she had was a really low-grade temperature, one that the doctors didn't even really consider to be a fever, she said. She had some congestion, but she was on the mend. He wasn't all that worried, either, when he started feeling unwell. After all, they were both young and healthy.The two worked in the Cliffside Park School District in New Jersey, both as special education teachers -- she at School #4, he at School #6.
It is also possible that a critical ingredient produced by the body, known as surfactant, which better allows the lungs to expand and contract, becomes depleted in some patients infected with the coronavirus. If you think of your lungs as a sponge, surfactant would be the detergent which would make them soft and pliable. Without surfactant, however, your lung becomes stiff and hard to squeeze. It may be why some patients continue to struggle even on a breathing machine.
Ben Luderer's wife says doctors still can't explain exactly what happened."We don't really know," Brandy told us."I don't really know."For now, all she can do is take things minute by minute, hour by hour and day by day to process how quickly her life changed."Ben and I were the type of couple that did everything together," she said.
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