SAN ANTONIO — A San Antonio musician had the scare of her life facing coronavirus and is now determined to give back.
Stephanie Key plays the clarinet in the San Antonio Symphony and is the Artistic Director of the Solo Chamber ensemble.
She says in late March, she started having a runny nose and feeling lethargic. Then on March 26, she suddenly had a high fever.
"I immediately called my doctor because it was pretty apparent when I put all these things together that I had this," Key says.
The day she had the high fever, she powered through her symptoms and actually performed a Zoom concert from home with the San Antonio Symphony.
"It was such a wonderful project that I wanted to be a part of, even though I felt like a train wreck. It was important to do that," Stephanie said.
Her doctor that day told her to monitor herself overnight, but she still had a fever the next day. That's when her doctor told her to go to the testing site at the Freeman Coliseum.
"Just the whole experience of trying to come to terms with the panic and fear of the unknown that we all go through when there is something like that you hear about happening to other people, but you never think it will happen to you," Key said.
Local musician battles coronavirus
She is grateful that she is one of the lucky ones that survived the terrible illness and plans to give plasma to find a treatment for coronavirus. She has this message to people about the virus.
"This isn't over, we have to believe this isn't over yet. We've seen in the past whether it is 100 years or plagues before, which this is, we have to be vigilant now. If we come out of this too early, I don't believe this will be worse, it will. We will make it worse simply by trying desperately to return to normal life."