Editor’s note: This is the second in a sporadic series of coronavirus survivor stories.

McDONALD — “I could have been one of the statistics, one more death in Trumbull County,” novel coronavirus survivor Jim Mashburn said.

For a while, the idea seemed appealing.

“(I said) I’m not sure I want to live with this, the muscles ached so bad,” he said. “I was so sick. My kidneys had started to shut down because I was dehydrated. My body was shutting down.

“So I was in pretty bad shape when I went in the hospital,” said Mashburn, 66, a retired minister New Life Christian Fellowship in Liberty. Years ago, he also made deliveries on Youngstown’s South Side to 1,900 clients of the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program.

‘JUST A COLD’

On Tuesday, March 24, Jim Mashburn thought he was coming down with a cold.

His son, daughter-in-law and grandson all had bouts with the stuff the previous couple of weeks. They live with his wife and his 84-year-old mother in their four-generation household on 11 acres in McDonald.

But what he thought was merely a cold kept getting worse.

“Every muscle hurt. It felt like I’d got run over by a truck,” Mashburn said.

“On Thursday (March 26), it had got so bad that I went to the flu clinic,” he said. “I didn’t have a fever, so they gave me some Tylenol and sent me home.”

Coronavirus was not suspected because at that early stage in the COVID-19 pandemic, the chief symptoms were thought to be a fever, coughing and shortness of breath. Mashburn had no fevernor cough, and didn’t appear to have serious trouble breathing. Not yet.

‘YOU’RE GOING’

The muscle aches grew worse throughout his torso, arms and much of his legs.

“It felt like the asphalt roller had rolled over my body,” Mashburn said. “It was very severe, constant.”

He also wasn’t getting enough oxygen into his body, sapping his energy. By Tuesday, March 31, it took him three hours to get dressed.

“I didn’t realize that I wasn’t getting enough oxygen,” Mashburn said. “That morning, I sat in a chair and I kept saying, ‘I gotta get dressed, I gotta get dressed,’ and I couldn’t.”

His son and daughter-in-law — Jeremy Mashburn, a primary care physician working out of Bazetta, and Penelope “Penny” Mashburn, a general surgeon at Trumbull Regional Medical Center — kept tabs on him.

“On Tuesday, when my daughter-in-law came home, she took a look at me and said, ‘You’re going to the hospital.'”

At Trumbull Regional Medical Center, a CAT scan of Mashburn’s chest led to a diagnosis of probable COVID-19, which was confirmed three days later when the virus test results came back. He finally was running a fever.

His oxygen saturation level was a low 84 percent, and he was a step away from being sedated and placed on a ventilator.

Mashburn figures that he got off easy. After one night in a negative pressure room and with IVs flowing, he already was feeling better.

“The nurses who took care of me, they weren’t scared to come into the room to take care of me.”

By the following Tuesday, he was breathing on his own without oxygen, so he was discharged to finish his recovery at home.

Earlier this month, he had one possible complication, epiploic appendagitis, a painful inflammation of the “fat fingers” outside the colon.

“It’s an inflammatory condition and COVID causes inflammation,” Mashburn said. “I thought it was appendicitis.”

After about a week, and a round of antibiotics to control the inflammation, the condition cleared up, he said.

FAMILY AFFAIR

Two days after Mashburn was admitted to the hospital, his wife, Judy, was taken to the emergency room because of difficulty breathing. She also was diagnosed with coronavirus.

Judy Mashburn’s case was mild enough that she was not hospitalized. She and her husband ended up finishing their recovery and quarantine together at home.

Jim Mashburn says he suspects that his son, daughter-in-law and 15-year-old grandson all fought off mild cases of coronavirus in mid-February when they thought they were dealing with colds.

His 84-year-old mother did not get sick even though she was around the rest of them the whole time. Neither did his 90-year-old mother-in-law who lives in Warren and whom his wife visited often to help with various tasks.

“It’s really almost been a miracle the way this happened,” he said.

Mashburn said he left the hospital April 4, and April 7 was his last day of fever.

Jim and Judy’s doctors released them from quarantine on April 13. The rest of the family was out from under any quarantine orders as well.

“We went to three different drive-ins for lunch to celebrate,” he said.

FAITH OVER FEAR

Mashburn said he’s not ready for stricter regulations as a means to control the pandemic.

“I have a lot of mixed feelings. Even though I have COVID, I’m more of a let’s-open-it-up kind of guy. I think it’s overblown, but who knows?” Mashburn said.

“Who would have thought that in less than two months, we would have lost everything we trusted in?” he said.

Sports, entertainment, finances, businesses — all the things people tend to build their lives around were limited or shut down entirely. Many found it an unsettling new reality, he said.

“But if you come from the perspective that you know Jesus died on the cross for your sins, you have hope,” he said. “If you trust God, you have peace.

“Don’t worry and if you have symptoms, go to the emergency room and trust God,” he said. “I know someday I’m going to die. I think people worry too much.”