ATOKA, OKLA. -- To my brother-in-law Tod Dillard, COVID-19 was no big deal.
After getting infected, the Air Force veteran and longtime law enforcement officer spent 115 days in the hospital. At one point, his condition became so dire that his adult children, Bryce and BreAnne, tearfully told their unconscious father goodbye via a phone stuck to his ear.
As Tod's prognosis improved, he had to rebuild his muscles and stamina just to attempt basic movements. Only then could he relearn how to walk, shower and feed himself.
But I'm jumping way ahead. Let's start at the beginning.
Related: Faith and COVID-19
"I wasn't really concerned about it," Tod said of the coronavirus, telling his personal story -- his miraculous story, as our family sees it -- for the first time at the pandemic's five-year anniversary.
A year into the pandemic, my wife, Tamie, who battles autoimmune diseases, and I joyfully welcomed the arrival of vaccines developed by companies such as Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.
"The vaccines offer hope for ending the pandemic," I wrote in March 2021. "They offer hope for a brighter tomorrow. They offer hope, in a very real sense, for my own family and friends."
But not all our loved ones shared our COVID-19 anxiety.
"Everybody that we knew, all it would do to them -- they'd test positive for it, but they'd just lose their smell and taste," recalled Tod, Tamie's older brother. "That's why I was joking around and calling it a government hoax."
Tod, now 59, pegged 1993 as the last time he got a flu shot. The injection made him ill, he said, and he saw no need to repeat that unpleasant experience.
"I was afraid I'd get sick if I took it," Tod, who has diabetes, said of a possible COVID-19 vaccination. "I didn't think anything about it really."
"That's how we both felt," agreed his wife, Tracie, who works with him at the Howard McLeod Correctional Center in Atoka, about 130 miles southeast of Oklahoma City.
For the Dillards, the state-run prison has become sort of the family business: Bryce, 33, and BreAnne, 32, also work with their dad and stepmother at the McLeod facility, along with Bryce's wife, Brittany.
BreAnne started her job at the correctional center in 2021 and lacked paid time off when she got sick in September that year. Tod helped administer COVID-19 tests at the prison and gave his daughter one. She tested positive.
But within a week, his condition worsened. So did Tracie's.
Late on a Sunday night, breathing became so difficult for Tod that he asked Tracie to take him to the Atoka County Medical Center emergency room.
"Honey, I'm going to have to call an ambulance because I'm sick, too," she replied. "I don't feel comfortable driving you."
"It felt like any other sinus infection."
That Monday -- Sept. 13, 2021 -- marked eight years since Tod and Tamie's mother, Patricia Sue Dooley Dillard, died from a sudden heart attack.
Tamie planned to call Tod -- as she always does on the anniversary -- after her brother got home from work. Instead, her sister-in-law's caller ID flashed on my wife's iPhone.