Former UK athlete — battling COVID-19 in Finland — ‘deeply concerned’ for what’s next in U.S.
For more than a week, Antti J. Peltonen was holed up in his home in Finland suffering from symptoms consistent with COVID-19, and his condition was only getting worse.
Peltonen — a former University of Kentucky soccer standout — spiked a high fever on March 14, and he had been experiencing other, milder symptoms typical in COVID-19 patients for a couple of days before that.
Though he had not left his native Finland during the calendar year, Peltonen is a world traveler and had been keeping tabs of the news coverage related to the coronavirus pandemic for weeks. He canceled three international trips that were previously scheduled for February through April and would have taken him to the United States, Mexico and various parts of Asia. He didn’t want to risk coming in contact with the disease and didn’t want to risk spreading it to others.
So he stayed home, and — even before Finland and other countries enacted restrictions on travel and social contact — he took his own precautions. He started cutting off social contacts, ate more meals alone, avoided public transportation.
Still, he got sick.
Peltonen said he suspected he had COVID-19 as soon as he developed the high fever, though he remains uncertain of how or when he contracted the virus. As a 42-year-old, generally healthy and active person, his plan was to stay home and try to recover on his own without having to go to the hospital.
“But it was after day five or six when my breathing got significantly worse and my lungs started to hurt more day by day, and my coughing got really bad,” Peltonen told the Herald-Leader on Monday. “At that point it was almost impossible for me to form more than one to two words at a time. At the same time, my fever would just not go away. That’s when I realized that I would not make it at home and I needed to get to the hospital ASAP.”
On the night of March 18, Peltonen went to an emergency room and tried to admit himself to the hospital. They wouldn’t take him in. “They did not understand how serious my condition was,” he says.
Two days later, he spent his 43rd birthday in isolation at home, his health deteriorating further.
Two days after that, he was finally taken by ambulance to a local hospital. This time — following nine days of suffering from severe symptoms — he was admitted, tested for coronavirus, and transferred to a second hospital. As expected, the result came back positive.
“If I had not been able to get to the hospital … there’s a good chance that I would have died.”
‘Uncertainty was stressful’
Peltonen said Finland had limited coronavirus testing at the time he started to show symptoms. At that point, Finnish medical authorities were testing based on a criteria of importance and advising citizens with “milder” symptoms — including fever, cough and muscle pain — to stay home until those symptoms went away, telling people to contact healthcare providers only if their situation worsened. Peltonen followed that advice.
He said the final two days he spent at home — “when I understood that, ‘If I don’t get to the hospital at all, I’ll probably die’” — and his first three days at the hospital were the low point of his ordeal.
“We had started the treatment and I was receiving antibiotics, too, for pneumonia, but it took more than 48 hours until the drugs and other medicine I received through IV started to work,” he said. “I wasn’t panicking but (stayed) pretty calm. But I also knew, after educating myself a lot on COVID-19 at that point already, that if my condition didn’t soon get better, I’d die. It was all about if my body and lungs could fight the virus off. Uncertainty was stressful.”
Throughout his hospital stay, Peltonen shared photos and updates of his condition with his friends and followers on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. One photo showed a line taped onto the floor that he was not permitted to cross, the words pointing to the forbidden side said, “Clean Area” in Finnish.
He also sent pleas to those who were following his status from other countries — including the United States — to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously. “Please understand that everyone can get COVID-19,” he wrote in one Instagram post. “Everyone can end up (in the) hospital just like me. Everyone can die. Including myself.”
After his third day in the hospital, Peltonen’s condition started to improve.
On March 26 — his fifth day of hospitalization — he was released.
Peltonen thanked the doctors, nurses and others who cared for him for saving his life. In an Instagram post upon his release, he highlighted the feelings of isolation that came with his ordeal. “Before I was taken in, I had spent 11 days completely on my own. … A simple thing as someone taking blood pressure four times a day was important. And somebody asking a very simple question: ‘How are you?’”
Kentucky connection
While still in the hospital, Peltonen was exchanging messages with the Herald-Leader and said that Kentucky was on his mind.
The Finland native started his college career at Central Florida, but he transferred to UK in 1999 and was with the Wildcats’ soccer program for three seasons. After missing the 2000 campaign with an injury, he came back to tally four goals and five assists in 18 games during the 2001 season, earning first-team all-conference honors. He was also an academic All-American that season. “One of the greatest honors I will ever receive,” he said this week.
Peltonen graduated from UK in 2002 and continued his education at a prestigious journalism school in Finland, where he’s lived since leaving the United States. He spent about 10 years working as a journalist specializing in feature writing and since 2013 has been an “independent brand consultant,” traveling around the globe doing branding and advertising for businesses from local start-ups to multinational corporations.
He still looks back fondly on his time in Lexington.
“It’s been 18 years, but my relationship and identity with UK is tighter than ever,” he said.
Peltonen said he last visited Lexington in 2015 and remains an avid fan of UK athletics with a specific interest in the school’s soccer, basketball, football, cheerleading, volleyball, baseball and gymnastics programs. “I still watch the Cats play live, often in the middle of the night,” he said. There’s a seven-hour time difference between Lexington and his home in Helsinki.
Though he has lived overseas for nearly two decades, Peltonen’s Twitter profile photo is a recent picture of himself wearing a UK hat. He said he wears it often.
“I will always be a Wildcat. Always.”
‘I am recovering’
Peltonen said Monday evening that he’s back home and getting better, though it’ll be a while before his health is fully restored. He’s still suffering from pneumonia, but those symptoms are improving day to day. His fever is gone.
“I am recovering,” he said. “I was released from the hospital on March 26, and I’ve been resting at home since. Doing literally nothing. Sleeping, watching TV shows, movies, and documentaries. I have been able to even read, which was not the case during the harder days of corona.”
He’s still trying not to speak much, resting his lungs. He’s getting house calls to continue his testing and make sure there are no setbacks. Doctors have told him that he should gain his strength back in three to six weeks.
“I’ll be staying mostly at home, just in case,” he said.
Peltonen doesn’t know how he contracted COVID-19, and it’s possible he never will. He said he’s never been a smoker. A history of mild asthma was part of the reason he learned as much as he could about the novel coronavirus early on and took preventative measures.
Back home and feeling better, he continues to spread the word on social media about the seriousness of COVID-19 and the need to do as much as possible to keep it from spreading. He’s also been critical for weeks of Finland’s initial official response to the pandemic and remains critical of the U.S. federal government’s approach to stopping the virus.
Peltonen says he’s been following the news out of the United States and is “deeply concerned” with the worsening situation here. He’s been in daily contact with friends all across the country, including some in Kentucky and many in hard-hit New York City.
“Please understand that this is not a disease only for elderly. I know it,” he said. “I, born in 1977, was in life-threatening condition myself and when I was taken to the hospital there were no guarantees that I would ever return home. And during the last five days it was a question of which way my condition was gonna go: Worse or better. Worse would have been death. Luckily I got better. And even if I’ll be eventually fine, this has already been an extremely hard disease and extremely tough experience that may have some serious consequences for my lungs and overall health.
“Please understand that everyone can get COVID-19. Everyone can end up in the hospital just like me. And not everyone is gonna be as lucky as I seem to be. For a lot of people COVID-19 will be even harder than it’s been for me. Everyone can die. There’s no cure for corona. If your body can’t take it, you will die. It does not matter if you’re young or old, rich or poor or fit or not. … Stay at home.”
This story was originally published March 31, 2020 at 7:40 AM.
