Cary woman hospitalized with COVID-19 while pregnant has lingering effects, worries about Omicron

It's been about eight months since Felicia Cabrera-Saez was released from Duke University Hospital in Durham after suffering from COVID-19 complications but she said she still has lingering effects.

The Cary resident contracted COVID while 19 weeks pregnant and was hospitalized for nearly two months.

She was unvaccinated at the time and has since gotten vaccinated.

She said she has some heart issues that she didn't have before COVID-19. Plus, she said she coughs every day, gets shortness of breath and feels fatigued a lot.

"The best thing that happened last year with COVID was my son, but COVID has been the worst experience of my life," Cabrera-Saez said. "I feel like it ruined my life. It like, threw me completely aback from what I'm used to doing and what I'm normally able to do."

Cabrera-Saez said seeing Omicron cases surge has her worried about getting COVID-19 again.

"Knowing that COVID is still out here, all these variants are still coming up, and I have to do things like other people do, like go to the grocery store and I have to go to doctor's appointments and everything can't be done on the phone or the computer," Cabrera-Saez said. "I'm scared like if I get around one person or one thing, I'm going to get sick again."

Cabrera-Saez sees her 5-month-old son Jayden as her miracle baby.

"He was the one that gave me the motivation to keep fighting to be here because when you're in a hospital doing something like this, you always want to give up because it's hard, like the pain... I can't describe the pain I went through with everything that I went through in the hospital, just to stay alive, just to be here," Cabrera-Saez said. "And he kept me motivated, him and my daughter to keep pushing, keep pushing."