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Mother, 9-year-old daughter recover from COVID-19

A Tyler woman and her 9-year-old daughter are coronavirus survivors and are sharing their story.

TYLER, Texas — A Tyler woman and her 9-year-old daughter are coronavirus survivors and are sharing their story.

"I was thinking, when would I ever feel better? I fell ill immediately just, you know, just kind of took me out," Charla Allen said.

Allen says it all started with a phone call from her daughters' camp.

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"She had a headache and a sore throat. She had been going to camp all summer and they have been taken temperatures every day," Allen said. "The next day they tested her and the results came back in 24 hours."

 She was told her 9-year old daughter contracted COVID-19.

"As soon as she got the positive results, its like immediately I got sick," she said.

Once her daughter's journey to wellness began, Allen's journey of sickness followed too.

"She was was fine, but she didn't understand me being sick," she said. "That was very difficult to you know, just kind of deal with that and to make sure that she was okay, and make sure that I was okay."

Credit: Charla Allen

Allen is a field nurse and helps her patients get well, including those with the virus.

"Just to hear other people's stories, and you know, just thinking, oh, that could be me, that could be us," she said.

Soon enough, the roles were reversed. She became a patient, and with the help of her community, they nursed her back to health and took care of her.

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"I'm glad that I did share my story with my friend, and they were able to reach back [to] our church and our friends, you know, drop stuff at the door for us," she said.

Both Allen and her daughter are COVID free. She now uses her free time to help those who are in the position she was once in.

"When someone inbox[es] me, they say, 'Hey, I got COVID,' [I'll say] 'send me your address, I'm going to come by,'" Allen said. "Now me and my daughter do these COVID runs and go pick up items for sick people, like people do for us."  

RELATED: LIST: Where to get a COVID-19 test in East Texas

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