CYNTHIANA, Ky. — The first patient to test positive for COVID-19 in Kentucky is sharing her story with Spectrum News 1.

Julia Donohue, 28, is recorded as "Patient Zero" in the Commonwealth and was the first here to battle the virus in March.

“I never would have thought that I would wake up in the hospital that sick,” Donohue said.

She said it started with flu-like symptoms on Tuesday, February 25.

“My husband had to pretty much carry me out to the car. I had to lean up against him. It was hard to get down the stairs,” Donohue said.

By February 29, Donohue went to the doctor, who told it’s bronchitis and gave her some medicine.

“They said I had bronchitis one minute and the next minute they said I had pneumonia,” Donohue said. “They said we don’t know what's wrong with you we’re going to send you to a specialist but we have to put you to sleep and put you on the ventilator first.”

She felt confused not knowing what was going on and a week after the 25th, the ER admitted her to the Harrison Memorial Hospital in Cynthiana.

“Waking up, went from February to March, all of a sudden it’s March like 3 or 4th and it’s like I had lost three days,” Donohue said.

Health officials put Donohue on a ventilator and airlifted her to the UK Healthcare Hospital in Lexington. She tested positive for the novel coronavirus on March 6.

“Every two hours the nurses would come and suction out my ventilator. Now that, that was scary. That felt like suffocation. It felt like when you’re choking on air or something,” Donohue said.

She squeezed her husband’s hand by her side and the couple quarantined in a separate room.

“The health department told me I probably got it from someone in my church who had travelled to another state,” Donohue said. “We sang in choir together so I was around them quite a bit. Me and my church family we’re close.”

She summarized her experience saying it wasn’t easy.

“I was getting impatient in the hospital. I probably had an emotional moment and the nurses came in and talked to me...and I just felt like it was never going to end,” Donohue said. “I was never going to get home and when I got home, I was never going to be able to breathe right again. That’s what it felt like. I felt like I was going to be hooked up to a machine for the rest of my life.”

But letters poured in. The messages of hope along with the care from nurses kept her spirits up.

“If it weren’t for all the love I don’t know I would have been able to cope with it as much as I have,” Donohue said.

Finally on March 13, she could go home after testing negative twice.

She’s now fighting another battle, her lungs aren’t functioning as they once could. She’s developed asthma. 

“I used to be able to walk a long distance, you know, walk around, go to the park with my husband, walk the track, I can't do that,” Donohue said. “I’m looking forward to the day we don’t have to wear a mask and social distance like we have been. I want to go back to getting in a large group of people and hugging people and without thinking about it and I'm sure we'll all get there one day.”

Until that day, Donohue advises to wear a mask and keep a physical distance from people.

The Cynthiana woman said she spent months in physical therapy after her coronavirus experience because her muscles had become so weak.