Virus hits home for Apostleship of the Sea

Compounding the challenges it faces is the fact that Andy Middleton, director of the AOS in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, has come through his own battle with COVID-19.

In early March, as the pandemic began to make waves at the Port of Baltimore, some AOS volunteers expressed concern about visiting ships, so Middleton found other tasks for them at the Stella Maris International Seafarer Center in Dundalk.

He and a few other volunteers continued ship visits, bringing religious items such as rosaries, scapulars and prayer cards along with secular magazines and fiction books. Middleton also continued taking crew members to shop or did their shopping for them.

“When Archbishop (William E.) Lori declared there would be no more public Masses until further notice, that is when we decided to suspend volunteer activities for the foreseeable future,” he said. “The safety and health of our volunteers is my biggest concern.”

Shortly after that, Middleton got sick. It started on a Tuesday evening with chills. When he woke up the next morning, he had a slight fever and an “almost unrelenting” dry cough. He messaged his doctor, who told him to self-quarantine.

The next morning he woke up with a fever and “felt like this was the end.” His doctor had him come in, and diagnosed him with COVID-19.

“There were about five days when I just wanted to die,” said Middleton. “For five days, I didn’t get out of bed, I didn’t eat. I slept and coughed. I didn’t have shortness of breath, but I felt like I could never take a full breath of air.”

On the sixth day, Middleton felt a little better, but everything tasted funny and had the same unpleasant smell. Sweets were the only thing that appealed to him.

“I guess in some way getting sick early on was a godsend, because the Seafarer Center was only out of the loop for a few weeks,” he said.