Bette Maurer stands outside the Ouray Elks Lodge in this 2019 file photo. The lodge's exalted ruler spent more than a week in the intensive care unit at Montrose Regional Health sick with COVID-19. She's now recovering at home in Ouray. Mike Wiggins â Ouray County Plaindealer
Covid
‘Grateful to be alive’
Bette Maurer was lying face down in a hospital bed, connected to a machine helping her breathe.
She’d resisted the doctors and nurses at first, objecting to spending so much time lying prone, despite their insistence that doing so would help her lungs recover.
When she arrived at Montrose Regional Health, she’d been exhausted for days, but had no obvious symptoms of COVID-19 and no sense of how sick she’d become.
“If I was to the point where I was gasping for breath or having trouble breath...
