‘It turned her lungs into glass.’ Lexington bus monitor home after month fighting COVID-19.

After a month on a ventilator fighting COVID-19 and several days of physical therapy to regain her strength, Sarah George of Lexington walked out of Cardinal Hill Rehabilitation Hospital last Friday as the staff lined the hallway applauding.

George, 62, a Fayette school bus monitor for about 10 years, was among the most seriously ill of the 24 Fayette County Public School transportation employees who tested positive for the coronavirus. But this week she said she has nearly recovered.

“God had a plan (for) me the whole time,” said the mother of three, grandmother of nine and great-grandmother of two.

After in-person classes were canceled in Kentucky in mid-March, George was among those Fayette school transportation employees who continued to work delivering free meals to students in need.

At the Miles Point school bus garage, where at least 19 employees ultimately tested positive, she said one day they were in a crowded break room “all in there together” and the next day employees were told to stay in their cars until they boarded school buses for work.

George said she doesn’t know for sure where she contracted the virus. She said she didn’t have a “clue” that any of her co-workers had tested positive.

School district officials “knew something but they didn’t let us know,” George said.

The district announced March 25 it was shutting down its two bus garages after a transportation worker involved in food delivery had tested positive.

The Fayette County Schools’ spokesperson and the board chairwoman have said that the district did all it could to prevent the spread of the virus among its employees even though it publicly disclosed districtwide only four out of 27 total cases before Sunday, April 5.

“I would go to work and I would come home and I wasn’t feeling well,” said George. She said she had a cough and was tired, “no energy, didn’t have an appetite.”

“I couldn’t even sit up. My daughter kept telling me, ‘You have to go see about yourself.’

“I said, ‘Oh I’m OK’.”

Finally, in the last week of March , George’s sister said, “Come on Sarah, ‘We’re going to go to the emergency room. ‘

She and two of her sisters tested positive for COVID-19, but they had relatively light symptoms and were able to recover at home.

At the University of Kentucky hospital, George said, “I told them I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t get ...air,” George said. Doctors told her they were going to put her in ICU on a ventilator, let it breathe for her.

“It was terrible,” said George . “I was hooked to all of these tubes. I had one in my nose and one in my neck. I had a trach and I couldn’t talk.”

She communicated on a message board. The first thing she wrote was “I want a big glass of water.”

“It turned into pneumonia and strep, the docs said it turned her lungs into glass. It started to shut her kidneys down,” said her daughter Noel Carpenter.

“When I finally came to myself, after being on that ventilator, they had told me about a co-worker dying from it. It just blew my mind,” said George.

Eugenia Higgins Weathers, a transportation employee, died after testing positive for COVID-19.

While undergoing rehab, George was so weak that she was still on oxygen. Home health workers are still monitoring her.

George, who is now negative for the virus, said she is receiving tremendous support from Fayette school transportation employees, a tight knit group. She said one of her co-workers, who also tested positive, calls her every day.

George is undecided as to whether she will return to work. She wants to make sure that the COVID-19 outbreak is “cleared up” before she returns.

“I’m just apprehensive,” she said.